Ernesto Neto’s Navedenga at MoMA in New York

Ernesto Neto Navedenga

Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto (remember anthropodino at the NY Park Armory last year?) has another scented sculpture on display, this time at MoMA. Navedenga is scented with cloves, and 2 visitors can enter the space at a time:

Since the late 1990s, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto (b. 1964) has created interactive, immersive sculptural environments using translucent, stretchable fabric. Navedenga (1998), acquired for the Museum’s collection in 2007 and on view for the first time in the galleries, is one of the earliest pieces from this evolving body of work. With its taut contours, rounded appendages, and soft, pliant surface, the installation resembles both the intimate spaces of a body and a fantastical spacecraft; its title, a neologism coined by the artist, recalls the Portuguese word for ship, nave. The artist embedded aromatic cloves within the structure, and visitors are invited inside its hollow chamber to engage their visual, tactile, and olfactory senses. Male and female; internal and external; weight and ethereality—Navedenga encompasses a profusion of symbiotic oppositions.

The piece will be on display through 5 April. (via moma, with many thanks to Nancy for the tip!)

Note: image [cropped] copyright 2010 Jason Mandella, via MoMA.

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8 Comments

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  1. Posted on 25 February 2010

    That is so interesting, but I wonder if they have to keep replacing the cloves again and again.

  2. Posted on 25 February 2010

    I got to see the big installation at the armoury last year and it was fantastic, totally worth the trip. Smell wasn’t as big a part of it as I thought it would be, though. It was more about the space he creates with those big stretchy shapes. And it was delightful to see how many children were enjoying themselves–and how many adults felt freed to be a little more childlike. ;-)

    I look forward to this one!

    • Robin
      Posted on 25 February 2010

      That was a huge room…hard to see how they could really make it stink! This looks like a smaller room, but also less of those scented things hanging down.

    • abirae
      Posted on 25 February 2010

      I agree, it was beautiful!

      The piece at MoMA is fun, but I didn’t notice any scent, and I was actually sniffing around. If there are cloves involved, they were mixed in with sand and styrofoam pellets and too subtle for my noes.

      • Robin
        Posted on 25 February 2010

        Oh, too bad! I figured they were in those two hanging thingies on the sides.

  3. Na
    Posted on 25 February 2010

    oh good- this one i can actually visit. =)

    • Robin
      Posted on 26 February 2010

      Then do let us know how it is!

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