Mike Cooter

View through The Mouth of Hell, Teatro Gregório de Matos, Salvador de Bahía, Brazil, designed by Lina Bo Bardi (opened 1989).
Photograph: Zeuler Lima.

The Mouth of Hell (after Gregório de Matos, Lina Bo Bardi) is a 1:1 scale concrete cast of the negative space created by the window aperture designed by Lina Bo Bardi for the Teatro Gregório de Matos in Salvador de Bahía, Brazil. Opened to the public in 1989, the theatre and the window take their names from the fiercely satirical Brazilian poet Gregório de Matos (1636-96), whose scathing criticality would earn him the epithet ‘Boca do Inferno’ (‘Mouth of Hell’).

Commissioned for the exhibition Another Reality: After Lina Bo Bardi (Stroom Den Haag, curated by Francien van Westrenen) the sculpture was made to be used as a stage for the public events programme of the exhibition. It also functioned as a viewing platform for a changing selection of drawings by Bo Bardi displayed on Reality (After Lina Bo Bardi), 2016, by Céline Condorelli – itself referencing a display structure for artworks and plants conceived by Bo Bardi for a 1970 exhibition at the museum which she designed and curated: the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), Brazil.

More information about this project at Stroom Den Haag can be found in the publication produced to accompany the exhibition, available here: Another Reality PDF