Vitoria Monteiro | The Opal 2024
SCA alumnus Vitoria Monteiro, or Veto, is the winner of the 2024 Opal McLean SCA Alumni Creative Production and Research Prize! Congratulations, Veto!
Named in honor of SCA alumnus Opal McLean, who tragically died in a car accident in July, 2023, "The Opal" is designed to support a recent SCA alumnus in developing their creative practice. Recognizing that the challenges and cost of everyday life can be impediments to research and production, this merit-based prize provides $3,000 that can be used freely by the recipient to cover exploratory research, development, and production costs, as well as home or studio rent, travel expenses, and even groceries. In exchange, the recipient will participate in an online interview for the SCA's website.
The SCA's Kathy Slade, who was an instructor for Veto during their time at the SCA, kindly interviewed Veto in our 611 Studios about their recent projects, plans for the support from The Opal, and other work and projects.
Read on ~
KATHY SLADE: So let me begin by congratulating you, Veto, on receiving the Opal McLean School for Contemporary Arts Alumni Creative Production and Research Prize. It's a well-deserved honor. But also, being as you are someone who was in classes alongside Opal, it holds extra poignancy.
VITORIA MONTEIRO aka VETO: Yes, it sure does. I feel really honored to be awarded this prize. It feels very special to me because I knew Opal and had the pleasure of coexisting for many years in this studio space that you and I are speaking in together now, which also feels special. To be able to honor Opal and to speak of her… I'm touched and humbled. And yes, to receive the prize, I'm also just very, very honored. I feel very thankful that the committee was interested in my proposal. Thank you so much.
KATHY: I am delighted to be with you here at 611 on this rainy Sunday afternoon. And I agree that this space is very special – just think of all the artists who worked in this studio. There is a lot of history here. How might the Opal Prize help in the development of new work for you? What might you do with it? What are you working toward?
VETO: I've been developing a project that is a deep exploration and a contemporary reimagining of Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto’s seminal work, Morte e Vida Severina, which translates to The Death and Life of Severino. Touching on Brazilian folklore, it is a poetic play that centers on Severino, a farmer who walks from the Sertão, which is an arid region of the northeast of Brazil, to the Recife, the coastal capital, which is where I am from.
The narrative follows Severino as he searches for a better life. Throughout his journey, he confronts the stark realities of life and death, encountering funerals, cemeteries, and the perseverance of the human spirit amidst hardships. Themes of social inequality, the harshness of nature, and the resilience of those on society's margins are central to the narrative, offering a poignant critique of the systemic forces that perpetuate suffering.
KATHY: The themes you mention in this myth-like text that was first published in 1955 sound intense, vibrant, and melancholic, but also entirely relevant to the present. How are you reimagining it? What about it, what aspects will inform your reenactment?
VETO: With the prize, I will work on one aspect of this project, an experimental audio piece, which will be a cover of Brazilian musician and activist Chico Buarque's 1966 song Funeral do Lavrador (Funeral of a Farmer). This song also retells the story of Severino. Chico Buarque's role in Brazilian culture is important because his music and writing critiqued oppressive regimes, advocated for human rights, and inspired resistance against social injustices. His music was revolutionary during Brazil's era of military dictatorship (1964-1985), a time when censorship and repression stifled dissent and freedom of expression. By remaking and covering his music, I am drawing a parallel to the contemporary global climate of rising authoritarianism and suppression of artistic and political voices.
KATHY: Tell us about the work you currently have on display at Artspeak Gallery in the two-person exhibition, with Lan “Florence” Yee, titled measured by hand. Could you tell us about your work in that exhibition? Is it another part of this larger project?
VETO: It is! There are three components to my project at Artspeak that incorporate Morte e Vida Severina. The first one uses excerpts from the text, which encircle the gallery in vinyl letters on the walls that read:
The grave you're in
Is measured by hand,
The best bargain you got
In all the land.
You fit it well,
Not too long or deep,
The part of the latifundio
Which you will keep.
The grave's not too big,
Nor is it too wide,
It's the land you wanted
To see them divide.
It's a big grave
For a body so spare,
But you’ll be more at ease
Than you ever were here.
You're a skinny corpse
For such a big tomb,
But at least down there
You’ll have plenty of room.
Next there is a sculpture titled A Strange Kind of Urn I that takes the form of a hammock. The sculpture is crafted from woven cotton, sourced from the Sertão, which points toward rest and liminality. Both soft and tragic, the sculpture references Severino’s pilgrimage, embodying the duality of life and death, cradles and shrouds. In the harsh Sertão, where the land is too dry and hard to dig graves, hammocks are used to carry the dead to softer terrain. My final work in the show, A Strange Kind of Urn II, is a paper pulp sculpture mounted on the wall. It incorporates text from Morte e Vida Severina, among other texts and acts as a physical citation. The piece references the dry surface of the Sertão while also engaging with ideas around language abstraction and hidden or inaccessible archives.
I am considering these pieces via reenactment, rest, D/disability, and labour. By incorporating themes of rest and liminality, I am reflecting on the relentless demands of capitalism, where rest is frequently denied to Disabled individuals, making true respite elusive. Though not structurally sound enough to bear weight, the hammock acts as a symbol, a reminder, or a cry. It gestures towards the right to rest, serving as a beacon of yearning. This vessel invites us to imagine new ways of coming together, to carry and be carried, to support and be supported.
KATHY: Would you talk about the paper pulp work, A Strange Kind of Urn II, a bit more? Maybe describe the process of it for those who don't know your practice. It’s a process you’ve been working with for some time now and one that you return to or that continues to hold relevance for you.
VETO: I've definitely made a lot of pulp works over the years, and the process of collecting and transforming texts involved in the making of these works is a process I keep coming back to. For these works, I collect various texts in the form of physical books or printed pdfs and articles found online, and I break them down, blending them into a pulp. I then work the pulp into new formations to produce wall works or objects. I view this process as the physical action of reprocessing information – there’s a kind of collection, digestion and regurgitation happening as these collected texts are transformed into textured objects. When I work with pulp, I’m thinking about how this process cannibalizes information – a reference to Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibalist Manifesto) – absorbing, transforming, and recontextualizing cultural, environmental, and personal influences. I am thinking about ways that this process generates new forms of understanding that challenge traditional archives and systems of categorization. These pieces become abstract archives of sorts, where knowledge and information coexist in ways they normally wouldn’t. I used the text of Morte e Vida Severina to make A Strange Kind of Urn II. The work is a series of objects installed against the back wall of the gallery. It has a deep terracotta hue, resembling the dry, cracked ground of the Sertão.
KATHY: So what else have you been up to since graduating from the SCA – since you were awarded the 2021 CAG Prize?
VETO: Yes. Wow, that's right. That's when I did my grad show. Aynaz Parkas and I were awarded the CAG prize, which is a one month residency at the Contemporary Art Gallery. I actually ended up working at the CAG before my residency began. I spent three years there, during half of which I was the Curator of Learning and Engagement and near the end of my time I oversaw the final phase of production of their 50th anniversary project called Timelines. Beyond that, I've been involved at grunt gallery in various capacities. I've been on the board of grunt gallery for two years and currently serve as Board President. We just celebrated 40 years and had this big party on Friday, it was a blast! I’ve also done some freelance facilitation work with grunt gallery, SFU galleries, and CAG, where I’ve led workshops around accessibility, stim/figet toys, and exploring notions of care in art spaces. Which brings us to now, where I recently started a new job as Co-Director at WePress.
KATHY: Congratulations on your new position at WePress. Can you describe the kind of institution that WePress is, and what your role is – what you do there?
VETO: WePress is a community art space located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. We serve the local community, primarily focusing on offering accessible and low barrier art programs for folks in the neighborhood. It's a space where we intersect art with mutual aid and partner with other organizations providing grassroots support to people facing various systemic challenges. Two notable projects we are working on now are the Radical Care Residencies and the Art Kits initiative. The Radical Care Residencies are low barrier programs that offer financial support to artists facing multiple intersections of oppression. These artists may not have access to traditional residencies, so this program aims to create space for them. The Art Kits are another exciting project. We collaborate with artists to create zines that act as guides to learning how to use certain materials like watercolour or pencil crayon. We then put the zines together with these materials and distribute them in the neighborhood. I co-direct the space with Keimi Nakashima Ochoa. It’s a new role for me but it feels really special and I’m excited about the direction we are heading in. It is important and meaningful work and I am honored to be a part of it.
KATHY: Excellent. Can you talk a little bit about your time at the SCA. Are there any particular highlights – experiences you wish to share or any things that stand out? What do you think were some of the things you learned that were formational or that might have a lasting effect?
VETO: I had a wonderful experience at the SCA and with my cohort during my time here. There are a lot of things to note in terms of the amazing professors that I had and the courses I took at 611. 611 is a foundational and formative space for me. Some of the highlights were the Performance Art class with you Kathy, the Spatial Presentations class with Sabine Bitter, and my first ever, first year, visual art class with Jin-Me Yoon. Another major standout is my experience in the Visual Arts Student Union (VASU). Being part of VASU was huge for me – it fuelled my passion for community building and helped me develop very transferable skills in event and program coordinating. Putting on events like the Halloween parties and the Victoria Art Trip (or Seattle for the OGs), these became significant, formative memories. It really set me up with a lot of the tools I have used in various roles since leaving the SCA, especially in terms of community engagement and collaboration. VASU became a passion project for me to help create spaces where we could connect outside of the usual academic or studio environments. VASU is where I first met Opal! She was very supportive when I joined the union. She had a very contagious and loud laugh. I remember during a long day of (intense) crits, it was in your class Kathy, Opal was in another studio and couldn't stop laughing, which in turn made us all start laughing, we had to keep going to tell her to be quiet so we could finish crits – ha ha ha. Lots of fond memories!
KATHY: I remember that day. Opal was a force! Thanks for making the time to speak with me and congratulations once again.
Exhibition images: Vitória "Veto" Monteiro and Lan "Florence" Yee, Measured By Hand, August 15 – September 28, 2024, Artpeak.