Three eyes now observe the shards of a broken Italian vase at the Planalto Palace on January 8, 2023. The blue and white amphora, by an unknown author, went to the collection of the Presidency of the Republic.
By the hands of , the fragments of the piece unusable for restoration help to remember the invasion three years ago, when 21 works of art were exposed at the headquarters of the Executive Branch.
Just as the remains of the vase gave rise to Angelini’s work, seven chassis of canvases destroyed on the 8th of January were used by Marcos Antony for the “Composition for seven paintings in green and yellow”, deliberately unstable for those observing it on the second floor of the palace.
“Without talking so much, all these artists maintained this fracture and left the materials quite raw. This idea of a violent gesture is there, which in the restoration is not evident. These materials maintain this memory, this history”, explains visual artist Luciana Paiva, curator of the project.
The fragments reached Luciana through the director-curator of the presidential palaces, Rogério Carvalho.
With the works at Palácio do Planalto repaired and returned at the beginning of last year, some things worried him on that occasion: the desire to give the waste an artistic destination, making use of all the material, to mark a historical event and to make the Presidency’s collection more plural.
Upon seeing the box of waste left over from the restoration of the works, Luciana says she came across not one possibility, but four.
“When I arrived at my studio, I realized that what was there was almost an exhibition. I thought of four artists from the Federal District who are closest to these materials and I found it more interesting to collectivize this process”, says Luciana.
Visual artist Paula Catu, based in , received scraps of the canvas that contained the painting “As Mulatas”, by Di Cavalcanti — one of the artist’s most famous and also the main piece that was exhibited at the Salão Nobre do Planalto on January 8, 2023.
With research on gender and textile art, Catu embroidered the seven rips herself. “It was a great responsibility to have this precious material in our hands, which was already important because it was a work by Di Cavalcanti and because it had all the history of being stabbed”, he says.
“I didn’t want to completely cover the scourges. Thinking about this place of registration, I wanted to leave the scourge open, but at the same time, build something on top.”
The other materials were received by visual artist Letícia Miranda: pieces of wood and screws from the work “Galhos e Sombras”, by , as well as rubbish left by the invaders inside the Italian vase.
The pieces produced by Catu and Miranda are in the final phase and will be displayed close to the originals — by Di Cavalcanti and Krajcberg. The amphora and Angelini’s work were placed on the third floor of the Palácio do Planalto, where the office of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) is located.
Of the 21 vandalized works, 20 were recovered. Only one, the painting “Brazilian Flag”, by Jorge Eduardo, was returned to Palácio do Planalto with obvious signs of damage — the painting, previously hanging on the ground floor, is now on the second floor, inside a glass and wood support.
“The Palácio do Planalto is the headquarters of the government. It is where the President of the Republic receives heads of state, as well as other authorities on a daily basis. It was understood that the space should be restored with presentation quality”, explains Carvalho.
“The ‘Brazilian Flag’, by Jorge Eduardo, was kept in the same condition precisely because of all the symbolic load behind it: a hyper-realistic flag, closely linked to a national symbol, was removed from the wall and thrown on the floor precisely so that the people who were circulating here would not get their feet wet in a space that they themselves had flooded”, he adds.
The new pieces also help in the gradual transformation of Palácio do Planalto from modern to contemporary. In 2025, 74 works were donated by artists to the Presidency’s collection (which brings together items from the Planalto and Palácio da Alvorada).
“There are four contemporary artists who produce from very unusual materials. And they are also very different languages: it’s not painting, it’s not sculpture. There is a predominance of these more traditional languages, naturally, because it is a collection that brings part of history”, evaluates Luciana.
Since last year, the Brazilian flag and Antony’s composition have shared the space on the second floor with Daiara Tukano (the first indigenous artist from Planalto) and Antonio Kuschnir.
“What matters to me is bringing plurality to the Palácio do Planalto. What I cannot agree with is maintaining an 80% male, white, straight and bourgeois collection in the Lula government”, says Carvalho.
