When you wish upon a ribbon . . . you're making art

Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander’s entertaining show at IMMA – with viewers’ input – shows just why her work is so popular

RIVANE Neuenschwander was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1967. She studied art there and also attended the Royal College of Art in London. Over the past 10 to 12 years, she has not only built a considerable artistic reputation, she has also gained popularity with quite a wide public. These two things – critical reputation and general popularity – do not necessarily go together and more often than not they don't. However, visit Neuenschwander's enjoyable survey show at IMMA, A Day Like Any Other, and you'll see why she is popular. Her work is approachable, involving, entertaining, often interactive and sometimes profound.

On occasion, though, you may feel that you're not so much at an exhibition as taking part in some form of communal, ritualised event, drawing on such models as a community sports day, a fairground or a religious celebration. In fact one of the main, participatory installations in the exhibition, I Wish Your Wish, stems from a votive tradition in Bahia. There, people trust their prayers to ribbons tied to the gates of the church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim.

Neuenschwander’s variation on this theme, played out since 2003 at multiple venues, involves hundreds of satin ribbons – effectively brightly coloured bracelets to be tied around the wrist – imprinted with the wishes of visitors. You are invited to take one. In return, you are asked to write your own wish on a piece of paper and leave it in the vacated space. Selected new wishes will in turn be printed on ribbons in future manifestations of the work.

This amounts to a neat piece of project design, but is it anything more? Is it art? Conceptually, and within the terms of, say, relational aesthetics, it certainly is. The idea of relational aesthetics is that the art happens in the social space of the triggered interactions. In this particular work, we are invited to ask ourselves what we really want, to share that wish with others, to explore the wishes of those others and to identify with one of them. We know that our own wish has a chance of being further circulated and discussed. We are encouraged to think and feel, to explore our own experiences and aspirations.

You are free to decide if that is what you personally want or expect of a work of art. What is impressive is that I Wish Your Wishand many other pieces by Neuenschwander clearly strike a chord with people. A cynic might suggest that these same people are so disenchanted and sceptical about contemporary art that they jump at the chance of a bit of diversionary entertainment, and there is probably some truth to that view. Perhaps I Wish Your Wishis art for an age when popular culture is dominated by television programmes such as X Factorand I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. In fact Neuenschwander's work has been nurtured and shaped by examples much closer to home than all this might suggest. There is a rich, vigorous tradition of home-grown modern and contemporary art in Brazil, one that is both local and global, characterised by a lively interaction with Europe and elsewhere but also independent and rooted in the country's own vast, complex history and culture.

In particular the extraordinary figures of Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica surely inform Neuenschwander’s approach. Clark, also from Belo Horizonte, lived from 1920 to 1988. Although for various reasons, including political necessity, she spent much of her life abroad, notably in Paris, she was exceptionally active and innovative on the lively Brazilian art scene.

She was a co-founder of the Neo-Concretist group who collectively published a manifesto in 1959. As the term suggests, the Neo-Concretists were reacting to the dominance of Concretism. Specifically they rejected the formalist abstraction of Concretism. They sought to situate their work in the thick of the real, organic world, rather than retreating to a realm of complete, ideal abstraction.

They favoured subjectivity over objectivity. Yet Clark continued to describe herself as a Classicist rather than a Romanticist, and her abstract training remained with her. Engagement with, and the active participation of the viewer, became the guiding lights of her projects. She actually used the term “participant” rather than “viewer”, and increasingly she conceived pieces with a therapeutic aim.

All of which dovetails neatly with what Neuenschwander sets out to do and how she does it. Not that she imitates Clark in any way, but her ingenious strategies of engagement, her elegant, formal schemes and finally her openness to the feelings and subjectivity of the viewer – or the participant – are entirely in keeping with Clark’s example.

One of the highlights of A Day Like Any Otheris a participatory piece inspired by Samuel Beckett's novella First Love. Neuenschwander has engaged a police sketch artist, experienced at speaking to crime witnesses and coming up with likenesses of suspects. Working to a set schedule, he is there in the exhibition on certain days. You sit with him, provide him with a description of your first love, and he tries to capture a likeness on the basis of your recollections.

It’s a neat and surprisingly rich idea. Incidentally, the logistics of having the sketch artist present in the gallery are possible because of a gift from a patron, Romero Pimeneta. Neuenschwander’s exhibition is not only extremely user-friendly; despite the lightness of its tone it can also be quite profound.

If you are interested in taking part in

First Love

, you can try making an appointment by email at rivane_firstlove@imma.ie

A Day Like Any Otherby Rivane Neuenschwander, The New Galleries, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital, Kilmainham. Until January 29th.