Antonio Társis is a Brazilian multidisciplinary artist whose installations generate porous resonance in sound, structure, and the material impact of humanity’s ecological imprint. By layering tangible and sonic elements, Társis generates a visceral tonality through the collage of visual, spatial, and material memory. From the friction of heating water and the pressurized hisses of evaporating steam to the echo of charcoal collapsing against atabaques – a handmade drum from the artist’s community of Cabula, Salvador – his installations evoke landscapes of disarray, revealing human extraction, consumption, and destruction.
A self-taught artist known for his utilization of recycled matchboxes, Társis draws on found materials in both his collaged and suspended assemblages. Present in his earliest works and informed by his experience of growing up in a favela in Northern Brazil, matchboxes and electronic waste indicate histories of labor and the gravity of the human experience. A full matchbox becomes an instrument, in which shaking matchsticks add to the rhythmic layers of a generated soundscape. Additional materials such as metal, paper, cement, and fire meet to induce a raw chorus, unrefined and experimental in its composition. Referred to by the artist as a “collective chaos,” these sound activations emerge from points of destruction at shifting stages of inception, climax, and ultimately catastrophe. Still, at its core, the persistence of life reverberates in an ever-quiet symphony, as small imperceptible notes indicate continuity in the face of colonial and political ostracization.
Based in London, Társis reconsiders the implications of international labor practices – drawing connections between communities in the Global South and North – and most notably the legacy of mineral mining. In his 2024 exhibition at Carlos/Ishikawa, Storm in a Teacup, Társis’s installation pointed to the impending combustion of an empire that consumes itself. Intricate and ambiguous, sheathes of assembled matchboxes in alternating hues of red and blue floated alongside an installed flag, nationless and featuring a constellation of electronic parts.
In a continuation of the disruption of nationalistic hierarchy, Társis confronts us with a borderless wasteland, where remnants of human greed and socioeconomic corruption are evidenced one discarded item at a time. Through this sinuous act of environment building, here not only the invisible is unearthed, but the sonic repercussions of our collective impact are made real.
