Nuno Ramos' Installation 'É Isto um Homem?' Confronts Migration Narratives at São Paulo's Museu da Imigração

Approximately 20,000 bricks spilling from a truck bed greet visitors to the long-term exhibition 'Migrar: Experiências, Memórias e Identidades' at São Paulo's Museu da Imigração. This installation, 'É Isto um Homem?' by Nuno Ramos, is the institution's sole contemporary artwork, selected through a competition that included artists Rosângela Rennó and Carmela Gross. Inspired by Primo Levi's 1947 book of the same title, the work incorporates a glass vitrine with a chair holding a brick, facing a speaker playing Levi's text in seven languages, voiced by Ramos himself. The historical building, constructed from 1886 to house European immigrants, required structural reinforcements for the installation. Ramos, known for pushing material limits since the 1980s, explained the controlled collapse was achieved using hydraulic jacks. The artist's multifaceted practice spans writing, composition, and essays, with a shift from 1980s abstract painting to socio-political works like '111' (1992), a memorial for the Carandiru massacre victims. His 2010 'Bandeira Branca' for the 29th Bienal de São Paulo, curated by Moacir dos Anjos, featured vultures in a post-apocalyptic setting. Recently, Ramos inaugurated 'O Direito à Preguiça' at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Belo Horizonte, a large-scale installation with metal scaffolds used as wind instruments playing Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes' 'O Samba de Uma Nota Só', inspired by Paul Lafargue's 1880 pamphlet.