Rome · 2023 / Bologna · 2024
NOI
Gilberto Gil illustrated by Daniel Kondo
Songs moved into books. The books moved onto walls. NOI brings Daniel Kondo’s visual interpretations of Gilberto Gil’s music into exhibition space, expanding a collaboration between song, image, typography and the physical act of reading.
From book to wall
The page became exhibition space.
NOI grew from the visual work developed for Nós, a gente and Andar com Fé, two books in which songs by Gilberto Gil are reorganised through drawing, colour, rhythm and sequence.
In Rome, those images left the scale of the book. Reproductions were installed across the Galeria Candido Portinari at the Embassy of Brazil, inside Palazzo Pamphilj on Piazza Navona.
The change of scale altered the reading. Spreads became panels. Images that had previously depended on page turns could now be read simultaneously, across a room and in relation to one another.
The title NOI — “we” in Italian — also carries the Portuguese nós: people together, and knots that create connection.
34 works
Embratur’s official presentation of the Rome installation records 34 reproductions inspired by Gilberto Gil’s songs.
Palazzo Pamphilj
The exhibition occupied the Galeria Candido Portinari at the Embassy of Brazil in Rome, in the seventeenth-century palace on Piazza Navona.
Two books
The exhibition brings together visual work created for Nós, a gente and Andar com Fé, both published by WMF Martins Fontes.
Rome · 6 October 2023
Gilberto Gil visits NOI.
“Esse grafismo contemporâneo para mim é muito interessante.” Gilberto Gil · speaking to RFI
Gina Marques’ report for RFI followed the preview at the Brazilian Embassy and placed the exhibition within the longer conversation between music and visual art. Gil described Kondo’s work as belonging to a younger generation while carrying elements of graphic art and traditional visual art.
The report also records a telling reversal. When Kondo thanked Gil for making the musical material available, Gil replied that the movement had come from the illustrator: “Os agradecimentos têm que ser feitos a ele.”
Marques describes the exhibition as a meeting of poetry and image and identifies the idea of connection as central: colours, forms, words and two different artistic practices coming together in the same space.
The collaboration looks back at itself.
One of the works shown in Rome became a record of the encounter itself. The exhibition was visited during its preview by Gil and members of his family, on the eve of his Rome concert at the Auditorium Parco della Musica.
The moment made the exhibition something slightly different from a retrospective. Images created from songs returned to the person who had written them, now at another scale and in another country.
Cultural circulation
From an exhibition to a public programme about Brazil.
Days after the preview, NOI became part of Galeria Visit Brasil, the programme organised by Embratur with Sebrae and the Embassy of Brazil in Italy. The installation entered a wider presentation of Brazilian visual culture, music, food, dance, craft and tourism.
Music translated into spatial reading.
Embratur described the installation as a contemporary reinterpretation of Gil’s work and highlighted the way Kondo’s drawings join poetry and image.
The Galeria Visit Brasil programme opened Palazzo Pamphilj to the public on 12 and 13 October 2023. NOI sat alongside other expressions of Brazilian culture, turning visual literature into part of a diplomatic and public-facing cultural programme.
Film
The exhibition in motion.
Original video records from the Rome exhibition are preserved here from the existing page.
Bologna · 2024
NOI moves from Rome to the city of children’s books.
BOOM! · Bologna Children’s Book Fair
Biblioteca Amilcar Cabral · 8–30 April 2024.
The exhibition returned to Italy during the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, installed at Biblioteca Amilcar Cabral as part of BOOM! Crescere nei libri.
Works from Nós, a gente and Andar com Fé were presented within the city-wide programme connected to the fair. On 8 April, Kondo also spoke at the Alma Mater Studiorum — Università di Bologna about the relationship between music, book and image.
Press & institutional record
NOI in the press.
Exhibition archive
Rome in photographs.
Installation, works, books, visitors, opening night and the encounter around the exhibition. The complete photographic material already published on this page is preserved below.
Exhibition record
NOI.
- Exhibition
- NOI — Gilberto Gil illustrated by Daniel Kondo
- Artist
- Daniel Kondo
- Music & texts
- Gilberto Gil
- Works
- Visual interpretations from Nós, a gente and Andar com Fé
- Rome
- Galeria Candido Portinari · Embassy of Brazil in Italy · Palazzo Pamphilj · Piazza Navona · 2023
- Rome preview
- 6 October 2023
- Rome installation
- 34 reproductions
- Rome organisation
- Embassy of Brazil in Italy · Instituto Guimarães Rosa
- Galeria Visit Brasil
- Embratur · Sebrae · Embassy of Brazil · 12–13 October 2023
- Bologna
- Biblioteca Amilcar Cabral · BOOM! Crescere nei libri · 2024
- Bologna dates
- 8–30 April 2024
- University programme
- Alma Mater Studiorum — Università di Bologna · 8 April 2024
NOI
A song can become a page. A page can become a room.
NOI extends the collaboration between Gilberto Gil and Daniel Kondo into exhibition space. Music, books, images and public encounter remain part of the same conversation.
