Cinthia Marcelle - The Family in Disorder

‘The Family in Disorder’ catalogue documents the first major UK solo exhibition by Cinthia Marcelle (b. 1974, Belo Horizonte), one of Brazil’s most significant contemporary artists, at Modern Art Oxford. The Family in Disorder (2018) was a new installation composed of two site-responsive and strikingly different structures across separate galleries, which together produced a mirror image of chaos and order. The work was created using a radical and unconventional process, employed by Marcelle for the first time within this exhibition. Destabilising the expectation of creative authorship in favour of collective decision-making, the result was a radical and totally unexpected intervention. The book includes 3 newly commissioned art historical essays by Michael Asbury, Stephanie Straine and Isobel Whitelegg. These essays contextualise the work and Marcelle’s wider practice in relation to its political backdrop of social inequality and collective protest movements. Additionally, this book includes installation photography of the second realisation of ‘The Family in Disorder / A Família em Desordem’ at the Casa do Bandeirante, Museu da Cidade de São Paulo, Brazil (2 September 2018 – 17 February 2019).