Diva
Landscape intervention, in Usina de Arte (in Água Preta, Pernambuco, Brazil), 2020
Reinforced concrete, resin and pigment
Dimensions: 33 x 16 x 6 m
“In a land devastated by sugar monoculture and its social traumas – the lands of Usina Santa Terezinha, since 2015 transformed into Usina de Arte (in the municipality of Água Preta, in Pernambuco) -, Notari opens another wound.
Diva, a 33-meter-long prospect-hole-sculpture, an abscess that reveals the historical violence over female bodies that continue to be wounded by many on a daily basis – and, depending on their color or gender, distinct and asymmetrical – ways, just like the body of Gaya, our Mother Earth. In addition to these bodies, Diva brings up immeasurable colonial traumas that, against invisibility, continue to fight for reparation. While wounded, Diva herself continues to re-enact – since it overturns open wounds – the racial inequalities on which Brazil is based, a symptom of a field of art that, like other areas of society, historically excludes non-white bodies”.
Clarissa Diniz
Diva: os primeiros 30 dias [ebook]
Juliana Notari’s artwork Diva (2020), which sparked one of the most intense debates in contemporary Brazilian art, now receives its editorial documentation. With approximately 250 pages, the publication Diva: os primeiros 30 dias is organized by Juliana Notari, Clarissa Diniz, and Inês Maia. The volume revisits the first month of reception of the monumental sculpture—a 33-meter vulva excavated at the Usina de Arte in Água Preta, Pernambuco. Since its unveiling in January 2021, the work has generated hundreds of thousands of comments, shares, news articles, memes, and analyses, turning it into an unprecedented cultural, political, and aesthetic phenomenon in recent Brazilian history.
The book brings together records ranging from social media posts to critical texts, press coverage, and memes that circulated widely, composing a mosaic of often antagonistic voices—among admirers, critics, political activists, and even religious leaders. In this way, the volume highlights how the work’s reception transcended the field of art and reached the public sphere, fueling debates on feminism, censorship, freedom of expression, coloniality, as well as gender, racial, and environmental issues in a polarized Brazil.