In the closing sequences of Isaac Julien’s film about the great Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi – part of this major survey exhibition of his work at Tate Britain – is a refrain that helps unpack Julien’s engagement with culture, history, politics and fantasy. “Linear time is a western invention; time is not linear, it is a marvellous entanglement, where at any moment points can be chosen and solutions invented without beginning or end.”
All sorts of aspects of time jostle in this sumptuous filmic collage. It reflects on and partly reenacts the life of a late cultural figure. It witnesses the effect of time on the remarkable spaces she built in Brazil. It captures rhythms in choreographed movements of dancers who respond to Bo Bardi’s buildings. It reflects on her fusion of modernism and historic indigenous traditions. And it includes snippets of archival film of the 1964 coup that brought about the Brazilian dictatorship against which Bo Bardi somehow created her architectural masterpieces.
