Do you know Inhotim ? Behind this mysterious and exotic word hides a place unlike any other, where art and nature are celebrated, without moderation.
Getting there can be tricky, located 60 kilometers away from Belo Horizonte in the South-east of Brazil, one has to make some efforts to deserve their visit. Tourists, artists and art enthusiasts have to go trough narrow mountain roads, dusty towns and their mining pits and the thick vegetation in this pilgrimage before reaching heaven.
Only then does Inhotim appear, botanical garden of about 2500 acres, where some of the rarest types of flowers meet the installations of international artists known in the whole world.
Some are on display in the open air, like children in the most immense of playgrounds, with all the ressources they may need : Yayoi Kusama presents her own version of the myth of Narcissus with countless mirrors shaped like spheres laying on the surface of a big lake, Olafur Eliasson built a giant kaleidoscope in which the nearby jungle multiplies, Chris Burden drops impressive beams of steel from cranes to stick them in the ground.
Narcissus garden – Yayoi Kusama, 2009.
Others have their own pavilions, big houses scattered on the park where the artists can install their universe. The experience is always a unique and puzzling one, just like the place itself. From a house to the other, in addition to the paintings, murals, sculptures and photographies, the installations guide you through a room where everything is red, another where every object is a mirror, or let you hear the echoes of the Earth with microphones going 200 metres under the surface to capture these sounds. Boundaries are shaken and disappear with everything being so great, beautiful, poweful, immersion is complete.
One of the pavilions of Inhotim, dotting the park with many art galleries.
Inhotim looks like a mad man’s dream : the one mystic billionnaire and mining tycoon Bernardo Paz had. The man argues that art and nature restore faith in life, humanity and made transmitting these two passions of his a goal in life, particularly to children – Inhotim now has a school where classes on contemporary art are given for free. Enough to make sure that the place lives on through the generations and to fill the 2500 acres park – of which only a quarter is used today – with even more amazing artistic and natural marvels.