Joe Carioca Opens At Saint Louis Art Museum

The Saint Louis Art Museum announces the March 6 opening of Joe Carioca, the ninth installation in the Museum's New Media Series. In this witty and absurd, yet poignant animated film, noted Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander explores intersections between cultures and the ways our hopes and dreams take material form.

Joe Carioca was influenced by a student workshop the artist conducted in association with her first Saint Louis Art Museum exhibition Currents 93: Rivane Neuenschwander. During the workshop, Neuenschwander described Joe Carioca, a cartoon character created by Walt Disney Studios in 1942 to represent her home country in American movies, newspaper comic strips and comic books, and encouraged the students to create a character that would represent Brazil today.

Neuenschwander used the children's drawings as points of departure throughout this film to construct a series of vignettes exploring the possibilities and challenges of intercultural communication. In one scene, a suitcase emits phrases for animal calls in various languages. In another, the artist addresses the economic motivations between cross-cultural exchange when a map of South American materializes, transforms into a bar code and then disintegrates.

Rivane Neuenschwander (born 1967) lives and works in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. She studied at the School of Fine Arts in Belo Horizonte and at the Royal College of Art in London. She has had solo exhibitions at venues including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Portikus in Frankfurt.

Curated by Robin Clark, associate curator of contemporary art, Joe Carioca will be on view in Gallery 301 through June 24, 2007.

The Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the nation's leading comprehensive art museums with collections that include works of art of exceptional quality from virtually every culture and time period. Areas of notable depth include Oceanic art, pre-Columbian art, ancient Chinese bronzes and European and American art of the late 19th and 20th centuries, with particular strengths in 20th-century German art. The Museum offers a full range of exhibitions and educational programming generated independently and in collaboration with local, national, and international partners. -- www.stlouis.art.museum