2009 was an important year in the definition of subject matter in my art. It was then that I began paying closer attention to the issues of male gender that had bothered me unconsciously for so long. Brought to light by texts that Nana (Mariana Antunes) suggested to me in the few years when she studied psychology at USP while I was studying advertising. Contardo Calligaris, Flávio Gikovate and Robert Bly were the gateway to other authors in what would become the subject of my Masters degree the following year, in London.
At that time, I found out about the story of young Alfie Patten, a British 13-year-old who allegedly got his 14-year-old girlfriend pregnant, being considered the youngest father in the UK. Though Patten was found not to be the father months later, the image of what seemed to be a child begetting another child resonated with paternity issues I was considering at the time. Patten embodied a feeling: one that boys never actually got to grow up. At least not emotionally and mentally. Something in the natural order of things had been interrupted during the industrial revolution, when men began to carry out their jobs in factories, away from their children. Robert Bly mentioned that in Iron John. Grown men no longer taught their boys to mature. And the result were men who were adults in body, but remained childlike in spirit. Patten had a very mature attitude when he chose to acknowledge the child's paternity. But physically, he maintained the appearance of a child holding a baby.
Concomitantly, I was exploring a technique taught in a rather random way by a teacher during the two years I spent at Escola Panamericana de Artes in my teenage years. It was a transfer of newspaper and Xerox images using paint thinner. Experimenting the technique along with coal drawing, I sketched the first image of what would later become the Where have all the Fathers Gone? series. I never considered it a finished work, hence why it was never shown. It was still something imature in both technique and subject.
The title came from a song by David Bowie. It mentioned the loss of innocence, as the lyrics asked "Where have all the flowers gone?". I remember hearing it for the first time as "Where have all the father gone?".
Comments