Prestes Maia:
Opening August 9 6pm to 8pm
August 9 to October 3 2008
August 9 to October 3 2008
Alegria Gallery
2737 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
323.454.4200
9to5 MF
A Diary of Exclusion
The Alegria Gallery, from Art for Shelter, will be exhibiting a group of photographs from the Prestes Maia essay. These images are fragments of a visual diary that Tatiana Cardeal has been keeping at the Prestes Maia occupation at the heart of the city of Sao Paulo, during almost three years (2005 to 2007).
The site was considered the largest vertical occupation in Latin America. The building was an old textile factory abandoned more than 20 years ago, and the owners owe millions in taxes to the municipal government. Some 2.000 people were living there, members of the Downtown Homeless Movement, which is led by 10 women from various occupied sites in the city. The groups, well organized, articulated are formed by thousands of people who formerly lived on the street, in squares or under bridges and overpasses. Like an army without shelter, they founded the Homeless Movement not only as a way to struggle for the right to housing, but to restore their own dignity, unraveled by lack of care and social segregation.
These photos are fragments of this history of Sao Paulo society, where the author Tatiana Cardeal is born.
