Re-Selvagem – Natureza Inventada

Casa Bradesco (Sao Paulo), Sep/25 – Dec/25

“The forest is like the subconscious, the synapses of the brain. It is rich in mythology and narratives from different cultures. It is an inexhaustible theme.” Eva Jospin

As part of the France–Brazil Season / France–Brazil Cultural Year 2025 – an initiative celebrating two centuries of diplomatic relations between the two countries – Casa Bradesco presents Re-Selvagem – Natureza Inventada, a solo exhibition by French artist Eva Jospin, curated by Marcello Dantas, on view through December 7, 2025.

The exhibition was first presented at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba between June and August this year, and arrives in São Paulo with the addition of new works. Although this marks Jospin’s first presentation in Brazil, her connection to the country dates back to a family trip to the Amazon at the age of fourteen—an experience that, she says, continues to resonate throughout her practice.

Jospin’s works are contemplative and defined by contrast: she moves between the monumental and the meticulously detailed, the natural and the constructed, the ephemeral and the enduring. By choosing humble materials such as cardboard, plant fibers, fabric, and metal wire, the artist aligns herself with a contemporary movement that values the meditative and manual gesture over the accelerated and mechanical. These materials—often perceived as transient—acquire sculptural and architectural weight, taking on grand scale and physical presence. Her works evoke the continuous cycle of creation, transformation, and rebirth. In Re-Selvagem, Jospin delicately reveals how the industrial can be reanimated into living matter—paper pulp, for instance, returns to its primal forest origin.

Among the highlights is Selva (2024), previously featured in the collateral program of the 60th Venice Biennale at the Museo Fortuny. The large-scale installation – composed of wood, cardboard, brass, embroidery, and drawing – invites visitors into a multisensory and immersive passage. As you move through the work, you sense the dialogue Jospin creates between architecture and the forest, while the senses are awakened to texture, scale, and even scent. Positioned at the beginning of the Casa Bradesco presentation, Selva serves as a threshold to the intricately woven poetic universe of Eva Jospin.

Equally impressive is Chambre de Soie (2021–2024), previously installed at the Palace of Versailles. Measuring approximately 3.5 meters high and stretching over 107 meters in length, this monumental embroidered panorama panel was handcrafted at the Chanakya School of Craft in India. The work evokes an ancient tradition; its significance lies not only in its scale but also in the collective gesture of artisans who sustain ancestral techniques without recourse to technology, relying solely on the movement of their hands. Depicting an imaginary garden in dialogue with architecture, the piece—like much of Jospin’s body of work—oscillates between grandeur and delicacy, composing an immersive landscape of thread and texture.

Re-Selvagem reflects a longing for the primal and the dreamlike—a desire for the organic, the handmade, the origin. Stepping into the exhibition brings to mind the world of fantastical tales, where every detail seems to hide an ancient secret. The show invites visitors to get lost in this space of reverie, finding their own way through Eva Jospin’s poetic universe.

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