Lygia Pape’s installation Ttéia 1,C is on view at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, 2 February–13 May 2018.
“Lygia Pape played a key part in the development of both concrete and neo-concrete art in Brazil,” says curator Matilda Olof-Ors. “Her attempts to erase the boundary between art and the spectator’s space is especially palpable in her late work Ttéia 1,C from the early 2000s. The installation embraces a poetic exploration of space and light, and an experimental use of geometric shapes, issues that Lygia Pape revisited throughout her career.”
The Ttéias are constructed by the geometric installation of gold or silver threads in a space, either from floor to ceiling or across the corner of a room. The groups of thread that course through space are also staggered, and some actually intersect others, literally weaving through the air. Other groups of threads simply appear to intersect. Ttéia 1,C blends the real and the imaginary. The interplay of light, the carefully suspended golden threads and perception prompt visitors to participate in the installation. The word ttéia, which Lygia Pape created, alludes to the Portuguese word teia, meaning web, and teteia, a colloquial expression for a graceful and delicate person or thing.
Lygia Pape (1927–2004) worked in several media, often simultaneously, including painting, woodcuts, sculpture, film and performance. She belonged to the Rio de Janeiro-based Grupo Frente, before signing the Neo-Concrete manifesto in 1959. Lygia Pape transcended boundaries with her occasionally provocative experiments, as in 1967, three years after the military coup, when she showed Caixa das baratas (Box of Cockroaches) in an exhibition organised by her friend Hélio Oiticica. In 1978, she began experiments with arranging strings together with her students. The investigations which took place in the Parque Lage Gardens in Rio de Janeiro were the beginning of the Ttéias, although the first installation was not to be realized until 1991.
