ANA DIAS BATISTA

FATO GATO [CAT FACT], 2023

Collaboration with João Loureiro

Morumbi Chapel, Museu da Cidade, São Paulo

On the roof: steel structure, styrofoam and polyurethane platforms, carpet, springs, rubber balls, water and food containers. Approx. 6.5 x 17 x 14 m.

In the garden: catnip (Nepeta cataria) planted in flower beds. 78m2.

Inside the Chapel: carpet runner, clothesline for drying bundles of catnip.

Hanging on the roof structure, at the back of the Chapel: "Gato arrepiado" [Cat with goosebumps], fringed rug, 5.5 x 1.55 m.

In Fato Gato, João and I focused on the population of feral cats that roamed the Chapel, and on their interactions with the staff - a security guard, a cleaning lady and a museum educator. We observed what was happening there on a daily basis, far from the eyes of the exhibitions' infrequent public.

Two different constructions overlap at the Morumbi Chapel: one, from the beginning of the 19th century, with rammed earth walls which may have belonged to a storehouse or perhaps were ruined before being finished, hence the unusual open holes; a second construction, added in the 1950s by Gregory Warchavchik, consisting of masonry walls with doors and windows in an eclectic, pseudo-colonial style. A real-estate enterprise had hired Warchavchik, a pre-eminent modernist architect, to restore and arbitrarily assign an original function to the ruined walls in an effort to publicize a new venture on what was once an old tea plantation.

The Chapel was never consecrated nor did it make it as a tourist attraction. In the 1980s, the building was donated to the City Museum, which has since invited contemporary artists to occupy it. Located in a high-end residential neighborhood, difficult to access by public transportation, the space is rarely visited, except by the cats that live in a nearby vacant lot. On top of the two edifices that make up the Chapel, we erected one more.