Que Chita Bacana
An exhibition about Brazilian Chintz: playing with the words of an old carnival song called Chiquita Bacana.
Que Chita Bacana tells the story (in text and marvelous photographs) of the humble Brazilian cotton fabric that's become the darling of interior and fashion designers in that country.
exhibition catalogue
Que Chita Bacana
Renata Mellão and Renato Imbroisi have extended researches and released the book “Que Chita Bacana” (“Cool Chintz!”), with texts by Maria Emilia Kubrusly and photographs by Lena Trindade.
ISBN: 8598999016
ISBN-13: 9788598999012
Format: Paperback
ENCHANTMENT FEEL
How many expressions an ordinary piece of cloth can show?
Even if it is a cheap cloth, originated from medieval India?
In fact, the diversity of its destinations – old and actual demonstrates the power of design in two different views from long ago Maria Helena Estrada.
The phenomenon “chintz 2005” is a direct heir to the current emphasis in raftsmanship, in natural-ecological production and in Brazilian creations.
However, the history of chintz is not exactly that one…
The fabric, or better, the standardization of this cotton, was originated in India – a country that prohibits the reproduction in drawings of animals or human images. The solution for printworks? Stripes and geometry, that is, the famous “madras”;
and flowers, which arrived in Brazil from Portugal.
In 1498 Vasco da Gama arrived in Calcutta and returned to Europe with printed fabrics from India in his luggage.
But the flowers on the Indian fabric were tiny and delicate.
It was
in Brazil where the explosion of colours (even with the use of only the primary ones), shapes and sizes were created; it was also here where the big flowers received the boarding thread, which is black, dramatic and delineating.
According to the Brazilian dictionary Aurélio, chintz is an “ordinary cotton fabric, printed in colours.” The chintz fabric has always been synonymous with “cheap cloth,” the utmost in kitsch.
But it has always left, in our affective memory, a Brazilian feel – now recovered,
and revealed in countless objects, adornments and clothes.
As a collective phenomenon that arrived slowly, the return of chintz re-adds much importance to not only folkloric adornments, like the work of doll makers from Nordeste, the bumba-meu-boi (a very traditional comic-dramatic play representing life, through the story of an ox), the mamulengo (popular puppet theather) and the yokel garments of festas juninas (Brazilian cultural parties that occur in
July to celebrate São João (Saint John), who was Jesus Christ’s cousin and odparent).
Chintz came back with nobility to the contemporary world; it now makes part of decorations and is the theme and raw-material of famous stylists.
It is present on cover of notebooks, covers gift boxes and is transformed in underwear, purses, bikinis and dresses. A cool store, such as Conceito, located
in São Paulo, imports objects in very bright and colourful chintz
from China.
But that is not only it.
Renata Mellão and Renato Imbroisi have extended researches and just released the book “Que Chita Bacana” (“Cool Chintz!”), with texts by Maria Emilia Kubrusly and photographs by Lena Trindade.
Two great events will also take place in São Paulo in 2005.
The first is an exhibition at the Museu da Casa Brasileira – “Fashionable
Chintz” – idealized by Renata Mellão, curated by Dudu Bertholini and organized by A Casa, Brazilian museum of objects.
Eleven famous stylists have been invited, such as Reinaldo Lourenço, Gloria Coelho and Marcelo Sommer, among others, who reproduce the contemporary expression of the chintz fashion.
The second event, to be held in the beginning of the year, will be a huge exhibition at SESC Belenzinho, curated by Renato Imbroisi and lead by architect Janete Costa. In the external areas of SESC, enormous animals will be assembled – a snake, which is the entrance tunnel, and a bumba-meu-boi ox, which is a show room.
As a whole, the exhibition is a recreation of the entire universe of Brazilian folklore.
The return of chintz to fashion is part of a phenomenon with much bigger dimensions, which comprise the whole Brazilian creation.
Whether there is or not a priority given to the final products of the new craftsmanship, a real mapping of the popular Brazilian patrimony is being developed nowadays, with a successive appropriation of the peculiarities, materials and elements of the handcrafting deed.
