Art projects

Image: Lina Bo Bardi, La Gran Vaca Mecánica - MASP. Boceto de alzado y display de exposición. Segundo estudio, 1988 © Instituto Lina Bo & P.M. Bardi

La gran vaca mecánica de Lina Bo Bardi [Lina Bo Bardi’s Great Mechanical Cow] is a proposal for the reconstruction, participatory urban action and subsequent educational dynamisation of the work designed by the Italo-Brazilian artist in 1988, part of the activities programmed in connection with the exhibition Lina Bo Bardi: Tupí or Not Tupí, Brazil, 1946–1992, which will open this autumn at the Madrid venue of Fundación Juan March.

In June, a participatory urban action moved La gran vaca mecánica from its production workshop to Fundación Juan March, stopping off at Casa do Brasil in Ciudad Universitaria and at the Brazilian embassy in Madrid. The piece will also be the focus of various workshops for children and teens at schools in the region of Madrid.

La gran vaca mecánica [The Great Mechanical Cow] was designed by Lina Bo Bardi in 1988 for the Museo de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) with two objectives:

1   To use it as a receptacle for storing the folk objects she had collected in Salvador de Bahía, made by anonymous artists with limited resources.

2   To stimulate user participation by placing the cow at the entrance to the museum, where it creates a kind of recreational space.

These objectives will be adapted to the context of Madrid and the specific programme designed for its presentation at Fundación Juan March.