Stela Barbieri at Sesc 14 Bis

Between the noise of urban life and the internal noise that accompanies us, an exhibition emerges as a poetic invitation to slow down. In Pausa, which occupies Sesc 14 Bis, the visual artist, educator and storyteller Stela Barbieri proposes a new pact with time: a sensory experience where rest becomes a political gesture and idleness a tool of listening and of reinventing daily life.

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Installed on the ground floor of the venue, the exhibition brings together large-scale works built from materials such as bamboo, iron, beads and fabric. In common, all the installations were conceived as refuges of presence and introspection. Auditory cocoons, rocking chairs and tactile spaces work as small capsules of suspended time, creating an environment where the imagination is called to breathe: alongside the body, memory and sound.

Among the highlights is the work Banho de Canto, drawn from a chair-harp Stela found in a musical instrument shop. The structure, surrounded by sound elements activated by movement, was shown in 2018 at Instituto Tomie Ohtake and reappears here as a key piece for understanding the immersive and contemplative axis of Pausa.

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In revisiting her path across art, education, literature and music, Stela offers the public the chance to experience pauses as interstices of transformation. “To fabulate, to pause, is a political act”, the artist says. “The alternation between movement and rest makes us perceive every instant of reconnection as a revolutionary gesture of care.”

With an educational curation attentive to different childhoods and subjectivities, the exhibition also proposes interactions with schools through guided visits, offering new generations the possibility of understanding rest as a right, and imagination as a path of healing.

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At the heart of Pausa there is a call: to slow down is not merely to stop, it is to resist, to remember, to listen. In a world that demands constant production of us, Stela Barbieri invites us to dream more slowly.

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