Geoffrey Bawa: It is Essential to be There is the first major exhibition which draws from the archives to look at Bawa’s practice. Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa (1919–2003) inadvertently began his practice as an architect, while practicing as a lawyer, with the purchase of an abandoned rubber and cinnamon estate, which he transformed into the garden that is now Lunuganga. From this first project in 1948, in the wake of the country’s newly gained independence from the British Empire, the practice is marked by architecture that seeks to uncover multivalent notions of place. Organized in four thematic sections exploring relationships between ideas, drawings, buildings and places, the exhibition examines the different ways in which images were used in Bawa’s practice.
Splitting the North Gallery into halves, Love Here represents two moments of the same movement, two spaces that together tell the story of how queer public space has shifted in São Paulo. One side is dedicated to Largo do Arouche, a historic square representing LGBTQ+ memory and resistance in the city center; the other to Praça Roosevelt, a vibrant, plaza less than a mile away, a node on the axis that connects the the city’s downtown to its wealthier west side. Both are of great symbolic, social and cultural importance in the city. And yet in recent years, Praça Roosevelt has become a vital center of activity for young queer people while Largo do Arouche has struggled. By placing the two in dialogue, this exhibition explores their affinities and tensions—and celebrates the divergent bodies that yearn for spaces of fraternization, desire, encounter, celebration and existence.
