Iole de Freitas
From the very first moment, Iole de Freitas accepted our invitation to take part in the BFVPP project. Aware of the importance of initiatives by artists working with different technologies and supports that register sound or silent moving images, Iole de Freitas had already digitized part of her work and agreed to include some of her films in the BFVPP dossier.
Films
Exit, Elements and Light Work are pieces by Iole de Freitas which have been selected by the BFVPP curators, in dialog with the artist, to be part of the dossier contextualizing her audiovisual work in super-8 during the period covered by the project. The titles were digitized between the 1980s and 1990s with the artist's approval. Some abandoned fragments of these works, as well as other materials shot in the 1970s, were used in composing the work Roteiro cego, completed in 2020 with the support of the BFVPP.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Elements
1972
super-8, 5’30”, color , sound
The artist works with elements such as water and mercury to explore issues related to light, luminosity, transparency and translucency.
Light work
1972
super-8, 5’, color
The film focuses on the observation of a curtain between the external and the internal space. The sound of the film is the noise on the street, while the camera, positioned in the inside space, registers the outside through the subtle screen of a very sunny, orange curtain.
Exit
1973
super-8, 5’, color
Exit deals with the displacement of the body in space and with certain elements that can still be seen in the artist's current work.
Roteiro Cego
1972/2020
35mm, 5’58’’, color, sound.
Description: Work developed from super 8 films made in the 1970s by the artist, which show recordings of the houses where she lived in Milan and New York, as well as abandoned fragments of the films Elements, Light work and Exit.
Access
Restored videos are available at:
Eletronic Arts Intermix
For on-site access to works stored in the Electronic Arts Intermix collection in New York, make an appointment and inform the list of titles to be viewed by e-mail (info@eai.org) or by telephone (21 2337-0680).
Associação Cultural Videobrasil
For on-site viewing of works housed in Associação Cultural Videobrasil's collection, in São Paulo, an appointment should be made by e-mail (arquivo@videobrasil.org.br).
Essays
Light, dispersive, ubiquitous: the non-sculpture of Iole de Freitas
Sônia Salzstein, 2020
Iole de Freitas
Iole Antunes de Freitas (Belo Horizonte, MG, 1945).

Iole de Freitas is a sculptor, engraver, and multimedia artist. She studied Design at the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (Esdi) in Rio de Janeiro, from 1964 to 1965. In 1970, she moved to Milan where she worked as a designer at Olivetti’s Corporate Image Studio, under the guidance of architect Hans von Klier. From 1973, when her first experimental films, Light Work and Elements, were shown at the Galleria Diagramma in Milan, she began developing experimental photography and super-8 artworks in which the representation of the body emerges as the main theme.

In the early 1980s, Iole de Freitas shifted her focus to the three-dimensional field, creating the Aramões, compact structures made of wires, tubes, saws and fabrics. In 1986, she received a Fulbright-Capes Fellowship for research at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. From 1987 to 1989, she directed the Instituto Nacional de Artes Plásticas da Funarte (National Visual Arts Institute of the Brazilian Arts Foundation), in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1991, she received the Vitae Fellowship in Visual Arts. Iole de Freitas teaches sculpture at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV/Parque Lage) in Rio de Janeiro. In the 1990s, she begins to create large sculptures. The sculptures developed between 1995 and 1997 are more fluid, made with semitransparent materials.

From 2000 on, her work seeks a relationship of tension and power with the architecture of the museums and cultural centers where they are shown. Sometimes her works physically break through the walls of museums, projecting themselves outwards, onto the buildings’ facades, thus questioning the territorialization of art.

 

Filmography
Elements (1972)
super-8, 4’30”, color, sound More
Light work (1972)
super-8, 4'43", color, sound More
Roteiro cego (1972/2020)
super-8, 6’10", color, sound More
Exit (1973)
super-8, 5’, color, sound More
Glass pieces/life slices (1975)
16mm, 8’, color, sound More
Deixa falar (1979)
35mm, 14’, color, sound More
Making Of