The four panels of Imagine there is no Rhino all relate to printmaking. One is a slab of red granite whereas the other three are all glass.
The slab of red granite comes from in front of the central public market in Porto Alegre.
It is a standard pavement slab in the city and thus the sleeping pad for the many homeless people there. The imprint is of a woman’s hand in her own blood. This, for me, is one of the most archaic printing techniques but also a reference to fingerprinting that was once used for signing contracts. Contrary to the claim of Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith, contracts are not and were not usually concluded by two equal partners.
The next square consists of a surface of black printing ink behind glass. It refers both to Malevich’s Black Square and to Dürer’s self-portraits. The latter was one of the first artists to portray himself in an extensive manner; today the black mirror, generally speaking the smartphone, is the ultimate tool for creating an image of oneself.
Vote Cacareco reminds us in dry point or simply scratched glass of the 1950s Brazilian custom to handwrite the name of one’s election candidate on the ballot paper. In the municipal elections of Sao Paulo in 1959, a female black rhinoceros of the name of Cacareco, who had been lent to Sao Paulo for the opening of its new zoo, won some 100,000 votes more than any other candidate.
Likewise, in 1959, Eugène Ionesco publishes his play Rhinoceros, in which the protagonists all gradually transform into rhinos except for one, who is under permanent criticism. In the last act, Daisy comments on one of her admirers just before his transformation: “What he said was: we must move with the times! Those were his last human words.” The partly erased Portuguese version of this quote is etched in bright red ink into the last square of the piece. Ionesco’s Rhinoceros is a pledge against majoritarian conformity.