Brighton Festival Supports a New Public Artwork by Brazilian artist Alexandre Da Cunha
Brighton Festival is pleased to support Brighton CCA's annual Summer Commission 2021 as part of our commitment to bringing artists’ work to the city.
From Tue 22 June to Fri 30 July, Alexandre Da Cunha will present Arch on the façade of Brighton CCA ahead of his upcoming exhibition Duplex in August.
The Brazilian artist is best known for working with found materials and objects, subtly manipulating the things we find around us in the everyday, building on the history of the readymade, to articulate the beauty he finds in their form and function.
The public artwork combines an iconic image of a woman’s black stiletto anchored with a concrete fairy cake, acting as a symbol for innocence and adulthood, indulgence, and luxury as well as power and celebration.
In creating works for the public realm, Da Cunha is responsive to context. Grand Parade, the site of this work, was named for the processional royal route through Brighton. In the last year, it has seen Black Lives Matter marches and forms part of the Brighton Pride march route. In the history of Brighton, as a centre of Pride and with a proud heritage of drag, the image of the stiletto has a further resonance to the communities surrounding this work.
This work is a celebration of human culture, an embrace of the absurd and the humorous as much as a symbol of a collective history with all its glamour, oppression, hope and folly.
Arch will be on view from Tue 22 June to Fri 30 July at 58–67 Grand Parade. Find out more here.
Arch is supported by the Brazilian Embassy in London, Brighton Festival and Omni Colour.
