Fernando Zarif: Timeline Notes
Thais Rivitti

Erudition was one of the most striking features of Fernando Zarif, as remembered by all artists, journalists, musicians, set designers, actors, film directors, playwrights and designers who knew him. However, the artist’s intellectual trajectory did not follow a conventional path. He stepped out of traditional education when he finished high school at São Paulo school Dante Alighieri. He started an Architecture degree course, but did not complete it. He would choose informal education, with free courses and one-to-one lessons. Poet Décio Pignatari and musician Hans-Joachim Koellreutter have been his teachers. During his life, he has developed his own system of reflection on and study of the issues that he found most interesting: the arts, religions, and ancient myths.

He started to draw at the age of two and a half. At the age of eight, Pietro Maria Bardi said during a visit that the child had drawn “extraordinary graphic elements”. He used to spend a lot of time with his maternal grandfather, Lebanese poet Chafic Maluf, who would tell him stories of the mythology of his home country. The bookstore of his mother, May Zarif, has been for years a gateway to the numerous books that make up his library.

He was introduced to major museums, operas and international dance performances from an early age. He always lived in São Paulo, but enjoyed traveling regularly to New York, Paris and Venice. He has been to Japan and China. He has also been to Lebanon, where he was fascinated by the local light, the ruins, the Phoenicians. The family farm in Botucatu, in the countryside of São Paulo, was an important place not only during childhood but also into adulthood, where he would take refuge to create.

He was familiar with the great classics of Western philosophy and studied Greek. But he also read with great interest everything he could get his hands on about Eastern philosophy. He was particularly interested in the study of religions, oracles, and the sacred. His taste for the classics and the transcendental, however, did not prevent him from admiring Woody Allen’s movies or enjoying jazz – Cole Porter was his favorite. Pop culture and classical references were present in his daily life and in his works too.

Richard Wagner was by far his favorite artist. Perhaps such a fondness is due to Zarif’s affinity with the idea of total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk in German), as advocated by the German composer. Zarif’s works involve visual arts, theater, music, video art, literature… Although he did not like the term “multimedia”, it is worth noting that his work happens at the convergence of various media and subjects. He would draw, photograph and later began to make objects. At the same time, he liked music and played the tabla and guitar. He composed pop songs and produced, among other graphic pieces, the covers of the albums, “Titanomaquia”, 1993 (the album title was given by Zarif) and “Tudo ao mesmo tempo agora”, 1991, by Brazilian rock band Titãs. He designed sets for plays. He did illustrations for the column of journalist Barbara Gancia in the Folha de São Paulo newspaper in the early 2000s. He worked in a diverse and wide range of fields. These timeline notes are the first attempt to gather some important facts about his career.

In a performance held at Avenida Paulista, in front of the Trianon Park, “Projeto/Construção de um encontro em cinza para tipos cinzentos ao amanhecer” [Project/Construction of a meeting in gray for grayish types at dawn], Fernando Zarif and eight other people sat around a table with gray flowers, fruit, dishes, and cutlery. A dancer and a waiter would walk around and serve the other performers, who were still at first and then began to eat and talk. The work lasted from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. and was seen by the passers-by.

He held a video installation at MIS (Museu de Imagem e do Som), São Paulo.

He carried out another project with artist Emanuel de Melo Pimenta at Paço das Artes, São Paulo. The work involved handling static electricity and included remote controls and twenty TV sets. At the same time, slides would project TV images taken with a macro lens. The song, Torre de Babel/Esperanto [Tower of Babel/Esperanto], produced by Melo, could be heard in the background.
Delivered the performance, I Yugen at CCSP (Centro Cultural São Paulo).

Presented electronic minimalist opera “FRANKENSTERN” together with poet and writer Décio Pignatari and Emanuel de Melo Pimenta at MASP. The performance, which was designed and delivered by means of videos, synthesizers and computers, was based on the book “Frankstein” by Mary Shelley (1821) and the biblical texts of Genesis. Twelve TV sets were installed in the set – each set would show one of the twelve body parts of “Frankenstern”. The futuristic creature was represented by several performers whose performances were recorded by Zarif. In addition to the videos shown, the TV sets were carried by twelve performers wearing black, in choreography. The entire soundtrack was composed by Emanuel, featuring singers Ana Maria Kieffer, Magali Mussi, Madalena Bernardes, Claudia Matarazzo, Ghandula, and pianist Aimár César. The performance was held in a single evening (December 12) and lasted 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Produced and presented the Rádio Paradiso program (a program on contemporary classical music) on Saturday night on radio USP (93.7 MHz) together with journalist Arthur Veríssimo. On one of those programs, the artist intended to make an adaptation of the radio play, To Have Done with the Judgment of God by French playwright Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). The performance, in which Marcelo Tas, Pepe Escobar, João de Bruço and Veríssimo would participate, was censored and suspended even before going on the air by Mário Fanucchi, broadcaster and professor at the School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP), who had just taken office as the radio director. The censorship was very controversial and mentioned on various media.

Fernando showed paintings that stood between figuration and abstraction, with recognizable forms and moments of material experimenting with acrylic paint on canvas. The exhibition opened the gallery program for the year 1988.

Participated in the Não Intencional [Unintentional]art auction at MAC (Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo). Personal items of artists like Leda Catunda, Cláudio Tozzi, Aldemir Martins, José Roberto Aguilar, among others, were shown on the occasion. The purpose of the event, which was organized by Artur Matuck and Tadeu Jungle, was to parody the auction of the collection of pop artist Andy Warhol, who shook the art market in New York at the time. The event was part of the activities to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the museum.

Participated in musical group Vestidos de Espaço in partnership with the members of Brazilian rock band Titãs, Branco Mello, Arnaldo Antunes and Charles Gavin, singer Paula Toller, musician Jorge Mautner, and producer Liminha. The group released only a single featuring two songs, “Pipi Popô” and “Marcha do Demo”, which were signed by Zarif under the pseudonym Pepino Carnale. Fernando was one of the group stunt performers and would go on stage wearing a mask. At the time, nobody knew who the band members were, who were only revealed after the group disappeared.

Directed and produced the Phoenix, Sisyphus and Prometheus performance at theAeroanta space in São Paulo, together with musical group Pizzicato Bartock.

Participated in the group exhibition, 2nd United Artists: Utopia, at Casa das Rosas, São Paulo.

Held solo exhibition Operação Plástica [Plastic Surgery], at the Millan Gallery, São Paulo. He showed 250 small artworks – 14 x 22cm and 15 x 18cm – featuring faces made of materials like glue, zipper, tweezers, pen, cigarette, incense, lead, brush, hair, marble, among others. At the entrance of the gallery, the artist presented a section of the book, On the Origin of Species byBritishnaturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Fernando Zarif said to the then editor of the Ilustrada section of the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, Sérgio Dávila: “Movement and modernist are redundant terms – it is the same as saying desert and Sahara; I try to find a way back to the modern of the modern age, I’m interested in Newton and Darwin. Hence the portraits, the faces.” (FSP, October 30, 1997, p.5).