About a two hour bus ride outside of Belo Horizonte, across the mountains, past an industrial wasteland, and through too many tiny villages to count lies a jewel of the modern art world: Inhotim. Imagine a place landscaped within an inch of its life, dotted with seating straight out of a Crate and Barrel catalogue, and then scattered with oversized art installations. Like all wonderful things in the world, it is the result of more money than someone knew what to do with. And even though you constantly have the painfully guilty feeling that this wealth could have been better spent alleviating other, more pressing problems in Brazil, it is still truly an amazing place to behold.
My favorite ‘work’ was called the Sonic Pavillion (pictured above) by an American artist. This was a large, circular building that crouched upon a hill overlooking a beautiful landscape below. Microphones had been dropped 200 meters into the earth, and then the vague sounds of the shifting earth were broadcast into the building. The glass walls were glazed so that the viewer could only see directly in front of themselves, unless they were standing in the center of the room; then they could see the full 360 degrees. It was an amazing experience: You are rooted to the earth, inescapably so, but your vision of the path ahead is clear and far, though hampered by tunnel vision. Unless you center yourself, and then...then everything becomes possible.
Click here to see all our pics from Inhotim.
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