Luiz Roque’s Films Pay Tribute to Marginalized Subcultures
The six short films, two photographs and a sculptural installation in Luiz Roque’s solo show at Passerelle – Centre d’art contemporain offer a snapshot of the artist’s 20-year career. Eschewing strict chronological order, the works in ‘República’ speak to the artist’s persistent engagement with both global and local issues through his weaving of gender, race, class politics, ecology, modernism and science fiction into sensuous fragmentary, filmic narratives.
In S (2017) a group of genderfluid, mixed-raced young people gyrate to bass-heavy electronica in the subway tunnels of some unknown city. Like the underground urban proletariat of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), there is an aura of latent violence, a revolution ready to erupt. In one scene, a muscular boy, alone in a subway carriage, suddenly turns towards the camera. Without breaking eye contact, he begins to speak in sign language. Translated, his gestures read: ‘We are going to invade your homes, burn your cars; you will never be safe again.’ The film expresses the raw anger of subaltern communities, echoing the turbulence of political life in Roque’s native Brazil.
