Jonas Van at Frestas – Triennial of Arts [BR]

The Frestas Triennial of Arts, in Sorocaba (in the State of São Paulo), is an ongoing program that gathers works by diverse artists and includes in its third edition a series by Jonas Van, an artist from Ceará based in Geneva.

From his experience with the Radio Ânsia project, a encounters platform to discuss queer ecology, the artist broadens the debate and the concepts of transecology (that brings a gender perspective to environmental issues).

In one of the dark rooms of the exhibition, Van presents the installation «Desambiguação» (Desambiguity, 2021), with videos – which feature digital landscapes and fantasies about the body and teeth – and a series jaws made with crystals. These are works that challenge semantics and notions of corporeality.

The 3rd Frestas edition is titled «The River is a Serpent» and its motto is the relationship between non-hegemonic forms of existence and the paths invented by them. The exhibition gathers 53 artists of different nationalities, and is curated by Beatriz Lemos, Diane Lima, and Thiago de Paula Souza.

ABOUT JONAS VAN

Jonas Van (1989, Fortaleza) is a transgender Brazilian artist and a chef. His work is based on gender disobedience, language, and ecology, using sound-video, ephemeral installations, and text. His work proposes monstrosity as a fictional and deeply intimate narrative, a linguistic and temporal fracture from an anti-colonial perspective. He works with initiatives and workshops on topics such as micropolitical food and decolonial structures in gender and feminism, seeking to reinvent the role of masculinity. Together with the artist Valentina D’Avenia [CH], he runs an autonomous kitchen: Cozinha Ephêmera, in São Paulo. Jonas currently lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland.