Layers of time and space on the Kilomètre 47 tile panel, by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva

Abstract

In the years of exile, in 1943, the Portuguese French artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva prepared a tile panel for the cafeteria of a new university campus, located at kilometre 47 of the Rio-São Paulo highway, in the old district of Seropédica. This article intends to examine, under the support of the Benjamin concept of experience (Erfahrung), the narratives evoked by nonlinear temporalities and the specialities inscribed on the Kilomètre 47 tile panel. Under such approach, the work can be seen as a tribute to work in the field, as an ode to simplicity, as a tribute to women, as a deference to Lusitanian traditions. But it can also be interpreted as the artist's reunion with herself, or as an introjection that envisions a collective dimension, at the same time poetic and potentially transformative.