SOARES VALESKA

MINAS GERAIS, BRAZIL [1957]

Valeska Soares sorts through piles of old papers on the gallery floor the way a painter would fuss over her palette. But she isn’t looking for colours, and her most recent hunt constituted a search for confessions of love. It took multiple trips to bookshops around the world to compile the 1,000 dedicatory pages that make up a single collage. Soares calls it For To (all works 2007), a panel comprising a chorus of wide-ranging voices from the past that, in their various stages of middle age or dusty decrepitude, still manage to hum a faint tune of forgotten passions and sincerely composed affections.