Issue 06
Auto Bodies
By Lost ArtIllustration By Garrett Morin
If ever you find yourself driving in Brazil, sooner or later you’ll end up hitting a pothole. Sooner is more likely, and that first bump will, in all likelihood, be followed by several more solid shots to your car’s alignment. Inevitably, damage will ensue, and through the grouchy frustration and white-knuckle grip on the wheel, you’ll need to start looking for an auto repair shop.
Fortunately, auto body shops in Brazil have a tradition that makes them easy to identify: just look for a strange-looking sculpture made of car parts. Mechanics spend their idle time transforming piles of discarded mufflers, tailpipes, and other auto parts, welding them together into these ubiquitous compositions. Nobody seems to be sure of the sculptures’ origins, but everyone seems to agree that they are disappearing, losing their place in the urban landscape to more modern advertising such as computer-generated signs and vinyl-lettered banners.
Marcio Almeidados Santos works in an auto repair shop in the Brazilian megalopolis of São Paulo, and has been making car-parts sculptures for over 30 years. He doesn’t mind the sculptures being photographed, but he doesn’t wish to pose together with them—“ Too many scars,” he says. Marcio’s father taught him how to use a soldering iron when he was young, and Marcio’s first forays into auto bodywork were in the form of sculptures. It was later that his father allowed him near customers’ cars with the soldering iron.
Even in the face of fancy modern advertising, there is still hope for the sculptors. For the last four years, a car-parts company in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina has organized a car-parts sculpture contest. The winner takes home a motorcycle, while the second- through tenth-place sculptors are each awarded bicycles.
Marcio doesn’t participate in the contest, though, and he won’t sell his creations. “Who would want them?” he asks. Some people do. Baixo Ribeiro, founder of Choque Cultural Gallery in São Paulo, proudly displays one in his gallery, alongside works by internationally recognized Brazilian artists like Os Gemeos, Herbert, and J. Borges. Perhaps someday Marcio will have a change of heart, as will the shop owners replacing their unique sculptures with less interesting advertising.