On this week’s episode we have a widely recognized visual artist named Mariannita Luzzati. While being most well known for her paintings, she is also instrumental in creating social projects in Brazil. Cinemusica is a program where she brings a multimedia show to prisons in Brazil, incorporating scenes from nature accompanied by classical music provided by Marcelo Bratke. Our conversation weaves together her experience as an artist, social activism, the effects of COVID on women and much more.
Date: December 2, 2020
Episode: 32
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Mariannita Luzzati, a World Renowned Visual Artist and Known for Creating Social Projects in Brazil.
Subtitle: Nothing In Nature Stays The Same For A Single Moment. You Can’t Be Bored By Nature, Can You?
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/ep-32-humanizing-prisons-w-mariannita-luzzati/
In this episode of I Know this Guy…, Norman Farrar introduces Nate Eckman, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Ultimate Media Ventures, which creates eSports content, experiences and products.
Mariannita, together with her husband, founded Cinemusica to tour around the prisons of Sao Paulo to inspire and give hope to the prisoners. She shared her experience as an artist, and discussed social activism, the effects of COVID on women and much more.
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Mariannita 0:00
But with the government that we have today, they don’t believe prisoners deserve anything.
Norman 0:17
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of I Know This Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know This Guy, wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, my kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell’s a bell?
Hayden 0:50
Alright. So Dad, who do we have lined up for the podcast?
Norman 0:53
Well, do you remember Marcelo Bratke?
Hayden 0:56
Of course I do.
Norman 0:58
Crazy story. I mean, there should be a movie about it, right?
Hayden 1:03
Yeah. Let’s get the director in on this.
Norman 1:04
Yeah, exactly. So anyways, we are going to be interviewing his wife, Mariannita Luzzati and she is a visual artist, world renowned visual artist.
Hayden 1:16
Very cool.
Norman 1:18
So I can’t wait to get started.
Hayden 1:21
Let’s dive in.
Norman 1:26
We shall. Alright, so let’s get started. So Mariannita, welcome to the podcast.
Mariannita 1:31
Thank you very much for having me.
Norman 1:35
Oh, I am so honored to have you. I’ve heard so much about you and I got to tell you, your husband is probably one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met and one of the most interesting people like we have interesting people on this podcast, but my jaw was dropping when I was hearing some of the stories that he had. So yeah, it was fantastic. So now he actually reached out to us and said, Oh, you should talk to my wife and anyways, I know a little bit about your backstory, but I’d really love to know what makes you, you.
Mariannita 2:16
I think I was a very lonely child. So since the beginning, I had difficulties in adapting to school until I was about seven years old and so I turned to drawing and painting and so I spent a lot of my childhood doing the things I’m still doing now. So I think what transformed me in myself was this period that I always remember when I was a child that spending time alone, and discovering things alone, through my experiments in drawings and paintings and objects that I used to do myself without orientation, really. So I think this is my most important background, the discoveries I made alone.
Norman 3:19
So you didn’t have a formal training in art?
Mariannita 3:23
No, then after I had a training in art, but when I was 19 years old, I started to do curses, and I had wonderful teachers. But I haven’t been to an Art University.
Norman 3:40
Interesting. So I guess as a child, where did you focus your talents on within your art? What type of genre? What were you looking at? Was it the environment?
Mariannita 3:52
When I was a child, I was very much interested in going to museums, and I love to spend hours looking at things and what really interests me was always the landscapes of distant places and all the landscapes painted by the Brazilians, painters from the beginning of the century, about the tropical forests or the history of the discovery of Brazil. This was my main interest at the time. Then I developed later, this taste for the landscape and nature, and my whole work now has completely transformed about it. So it’s always about nature and landscape and things that I discovered through this observation as well.
Norman 4:49
If I understand correctly, this is going back to the last podcast I had with Marcelo. He was saying that you live in a gorgeous area of Brazil. Is that one of the reasons why you’re there?
Mariannita 5:02
Yeah, I don’t know if he must’ve told you, but we live between Sao Paulo and London. So we spent time in between these two places. Sao Paulo is a huge city, not beautiful, not green, an industrial city. But when I am in Brazil, I try to spend some periods in my family house or in the mountains near Sao Paulo and here, you have a beautiful nature, and beautiful landscapes and since the beginning of the pandemic, we are here at the mountain.
Norman 5:47
I think that’s what he was referring to.
Mariannita 5:50
Yes.
Norman 5:51
Yeah. You got a long way to go to work sometimes, huh?
Mariannita 5:54
Yes.
Norman 5:58
So what do you think, between Sao Paulo, it’s so hard for me to say, and London, there’s got to be just incredible changes and, just differences between the two, of course, culturally, what do you like?
Mariannita 6:17
It’s completely different, completely different, really. But I think London is a huge city as well, but much calmer than Sao Paulo and I think I can have a more quality life in London, because it’s a very green city, and English people are very attracted to nature and you are surrounded by nature in London, São Paulo, it’s a different things. So you have an industrial city with trees, but things change all the time and so you have constructions all the time and destroying green areas, just to do developing, seeing. So it’s a completely different way of life. But Brazil has a wonderful nature, no in Sao Paulo, but the surroundings of Sao Paulo and in the place of where I am now in the mountains of Manta mountains. You have wonderful nature and trees and very wild nature. This is a thing that I miss when I am in England, because you don’t have a wild nature anymore in Europe. You have everything planted and so everything looks the same. Here in Brazil, if you move from where I am now in Manta to the Amazon, you see a completely different sort of animals, trees, birds and everything change and this is very interesting. This is very alive.
Norman 8:15
I want to go a little bit further back. So we talked about you going to university, and can we talk a bit more about either during university or after university, your first jobs, what did you do to get where you are now?
Mariannita 8:32
For me, the change of my starting career was that I was being treated as an artist, but into a studio of another artist. So I haven’t been to a formal university. But I did many courses through artists, living artists in Brazil, and that they used to open their studios for young artists to come and be with them for a period liking the old ages and so we got experience through these periods together into the studios and I did these we found wonderful teacher for engraving that was called the Event Rosa Dean, then my major teacher was Carlos. He is an artist who has this course at his studio. So I used to go there every day to work on my works and he would analyze and in one of these periods, I got a very important prize in Brazil and it was the first prize for a painter in Brasilia and as soon as I got that prize, I was hired by a gallery in Sao Paulo and so I started my career of exhibitions and showing in museums and selling my work and this was the beginning of everything and so I started to develop, let’s say, my style, my preferences into my art and I started with engraving and painting, but I do a lot of video as well. I do a lot of collaborations with music with Marcelo, and we do a show together, where I have a production of a few and he plays in a place like a cinema, we do this stage a stage like cinema, theater, with my film on the background and his music and we had many tours with this format concert and so I love to experiment things. So I’m always trying something new and I like very much to work with like theater, art and music. I have a project with Marcelo, and one actor as well, where we work together in a stage where we have a film, the actor reading poetry, Marcelo playing piano, so I love this kind of collaboration.
Norman 11:43
So before you were talking about going in and performing with Marcelo, are we talking about Cinemusica?
Mariannita 11:52
Cinemusica? Yes, I created Cinemusica.
Norman 11:54
Oh, okay.
Mariannita 11:55
Yes. Because I always wanted to do something with prisons in Brazil and so I created Cinemusica to to bring nature inside of the prisons and we created this concert where I had this huge screen on the background of a room in one of the prisons, for example, that where we have been and Marcelo, we’ve his grand piano in front of this screen. So Marcelo would play pieces by Villalobos inspired by nature and on the background, I would project many nature’s from Brazil, like the forest of the Amazon or the Pantanal, the seascapes. So for the prisoners to be able to feel nature again where they are because prisons in Brazil are in a very hard environment and they don’t have contact with nature and I believe if you don’t have contact with nature, you cannot recuperate yourself and be reintegrated again to society. So nature, I think it’s a very important step for you to regrow feelings and rethink life and we had this experience in 10 prisons in the state of Sao Paulo. After that, we did this concert in many theaters as well, but with normal public, not prisoners.
Norman 13:51
How did the prisoners react?
Mariannita 13:53
Oh, they love it. Because it was an open project where they could go if they wanted, they were not obliged to attend the concert. But since the beginning, they were so excited of receiving this into their whole note that they would prepare the rooms for us. So we would arrive with the piano, the screen and the projector in the morning and we would work together to prepare the room for the show for the night. So we would spend the day arranging the seats and arranging everything and it was a wonderful experience for us and for them to make part of organizing this thing and on the time of the concert, they would come like 10 then 20 then 30 then one would go out and to call the others and at the end, we had that full house, and they would sing along the songs of Villalobos, they would cry, they used to cry when they see the scenes of the sea or the forest. It was a very emotional thing and they reacted very well and the background we had from many directors from the prisons after we pass through these was that for two weeks, they were much calmer and focused on their jobs there and it was a very positive background for us, too and we received many letters from them after that, saying how important was for them to receive a progress, because they will not used to receive anything. It was a really beautiful product, I love it really and in the theatres, when we do these products, it’s very interesting because we attract people that are not used to classical music, because of the visual part. Because of the music, we would attract people from classical music that have not used contemporary art. So it was a mixed public, very interesting and I believe everything has to be mixed to you. I am against doing just a traditional thing. I think it’s very interesting to open to the public and to have diversity as a public.
Hayden 16:52
So how do you look at mixed mediums in your work? Or how do you go from, even for Camerata Brasil? Like, do you start with the images and then think of the music you’d like to go with it? Or is it collaborative?
Mariannita 17:09
No, it’s collaborative. It’s collaborative, we think about the composer that Marcelo will focus on. So for example, for Ernesto Nazareth, we start with the selection of the music, Marcelo selects the music, he does the the arrangements and then with the music, I think the images, but working with music, it has to be very subtle, because images can disturb the music and for example, when you have many musicians like the Camerata and the piano, I have to be very careful, it has to be an image that you don’t even notice the moving. Everything has to move in a way together with the music and in a very soft way. Because you cannot be disturbing with many movements or many images invading the music. So this is what I understood after the first Cinermusica is this very subtle thing that has to be so I do I think 100 edit things until the film is complete. Sometimes we start the tour with a film and we finish with another one because after a concert, I have to change that a little bit then I have to change a little bit more. So I’m always, it’s an open thing that I’m always working on. Because when you listen to a concert or watch something, after many times watching the film, you see what works and what doesn’t work. It’s a very experimental thing, but has to be really the right thing. There is the point where it has to be perfect really.
Hayden 19:33
Right.
Norman 19:34
I almost see it as becoming one.
Mariannita 19:38
Yes, yes. Yeah, you are absolutely right, because you don’t have to notice that the film is invading the music. It has to work with the music.
Norman 19:55
When you did Cinemusica in prison, and then you went to a theater to show this to the general public, did you get the same reaction or did you get a completely different reaction?
Mariannita 20:09
Yeah, it’s funny because in standard concerts, people would clap between the music and they are more alive during the performance. But when you have the Cinemusica format, it’s completely different because you have a dark room like a cinema and they are all completely silent from beginning to the end, because you have the production in the background with the darkness of the room. So they respect this entire concert, from beginning to the end without doing any noise and they just clap when it finishes. So this is a completely different audience really.
Norman 21:09
You said that you went to 10 different prisons in Brazil, do you have any plans to expand that out even outside of Brazil?
Mariannita 21:17
Oh, I would love to do that. But today, we have different laws in Brazil and I don’t think we’ll be able to do it again here because you cannot enter and we were very criticized here, because we did these and saying, Oh, you should do these into prisons and so the government at the time was very for this project. But with the government that we have today, they don’t believe prisoners deserve anything. So I think we won’t be able to do it here.
Norman 22:05
Yeah, that’s a real pet peeve of mine. When especially when you’re looking at reform, I can’t see it hurting anything trying to humanize people.
Mariannita 22:14
Oh, of course. But they say, Oh, they come on, they did so many crimes. So why should we bring something for them? This kind of mentality and it’s very bad. But I believe they should receive many progress into the prisons, and they should be able to work artistically as well. We had wonderful experiences in one of the prisons we have been to. When we arrived, one of the prisoners, and I rented an exhibition about their works and it was a very interesting experience for me to analyze all the words there because they knew I was a visual artist. So they wanted to show me and we changed ideas. It was really rich for them and for me, as well and I think we have to exchange things, good things, which people, no matter if they are in prison or outside, they are the same for me.
Norman 23:25
Yeah, especially when you’re doing something like that, or like you said, an arts project, or just giving somebody some form of worth, you’ll probably see the hostility. I’m not a psychologist, but I would think that if you can remove the tension by doing something that they like, and also providing them with something to do instead of boredom, I would think that would be a huge benefit not only to violence, but when they get out.
Mariannita 23:55
Oh, of course, of course and they learn things as well. The sad thing in Brazil is that the prisoners stay locked there without doing anything. They don’t have schools, inside the prisons. They don’t have any training. Very few of them can work in small things. So they go out without anything so they cannot develop a career while they are in prison. It’s very sad, very sad.
Norman 24:31
We’re so backwards and it’s not just Brazil, it’s most countries around the world. I mean, I’ve seen some of the Scandinavian prisons in their models. I’ve seen some really interesting models here in Canada, that actually let prisoners go out and do shopping. It’s almost like an apartment that they have or townhouse with a few people. They do their own cooking. It’s not a halfway house.
Mariannita 24:56
But this is very good. Very good, of course. I saw a documentary once about a prison in India, it was not a prison, it was like a village where prisoners would go with their families. So they would stay in that village for a period of two years, three years, I don’t know, depending on the crime they committed, but with their families. So the families would go along and it’s a kind of punishment for the families as well. But they have to go through this together and it was very interesting, because they would go out with other values as well and he, they would work as a community in that place and they were not locked. They were dressed, like in a village with houses, but they cannot go out from the village.
Norman 25:54
Yet, I’d really like to have a guest on or, a couple of people, maybe from the private prison side of things, just different people representing different maybe even some people that were in prison on this podcast, and just kind of have an interesting chat. I mean, we could talk for hours on that.
Mariannita 26:16
Yeah, of course. Because they know exactly what works and what doesn’t work, of course.
Norman 26:24
It’s interesting, just because you really do want to have all sides. But I mean, my last comment, again, like overcrowding people into one cell for 23 hours a day, or possibly even worse, putting a person with no windows, basically, into a cell for 23 hours a day is not going to reform anybody. It’s just No. In Canada, it’s actually I don’t even like having that in Canada, but from what I understand, it’s 30 days, but some people just can’t do it and their prison, get this, Oh my gosh. So I saw this documentary, where this guy, he went into jail for some reason that he ended up being convicted, he ended up in prison. He got into a fight with somebody, he had no choice but to get into the fight. So they gave them a two week sentence and within the two weeks of being locked up in solitary, he went kind of crazy and he got another two weeks and then because he couldn’t stand it, he did something out. Anyways, he got up to about three months, and he tried to commit suicide. So what do they do? They give him more time. He was up to about three years, because he couldn’t take it like some people can. Anyways, I know we’re going down a completely different rabbit hole here. But when we start talking about that I kind of get heated a little but that’s crazy.
Mariannita 27:59
No, of course I’ve got but also if you are locked for 23 hours a day, it’s ridiculous. You don’t have contact with the wall. That was the reality. So you’re living in another, it’s horrible, really horrible.
Norman 28:16
Okay, so I understand that you have a quote that you love. What is it?
Mariannita 28:21
It’s a quote by David Hockney. He’s very attached to nature and he came back to live in England some years ago and he started to think about the trees of England and the forest because he missed so much nature, the English nature and he did a quote, it was about I think, “Nothing in nature stays the same for even a moment”, I think but something like that. Yes. But, this quote is very interesting, because he was telling once that he was painting a forest. He went to the woods, and with his brushes and everything started to paint a work about those trees.. The day after, he went to the same place to finish the painting and all the trees were chopped down. Yes and so I think there is a double sense into this phrase. It doesn’t stay the same. It doesn’t stay because nature changes all the time. If you are in the middle of the woods now in a moment, the wind would come and would change everything or the sunlight, everything changed, but everything changed as well because of human action as well.
Norman 29:58
When I was living in Hawaii, one of the things I loved doing was just going down to the water, and almost every night, and I sit there for about an hour and it’s water. But just like this says it changes every second, and it was so calm and so peaceful. That was my time alone, that I could just sit out there and just be at peace. Like I’ve never lived on water before. But it was kind of interesting because the ocean had its own personality every day.
Mariannita 30:28
The ocean is like a fire that changes and moves all the time. I love the ocean and I think Hawaii must be very interesting in terms of nature. Flowers and trees. Yes.
Hayden 30:44
I know, Mariannita, you mentioned, you wanted to talk about the forest fires in Brazil, I think that can relate to the nature changing and the issue with people intervening with nature. Do you want to speak about the forest fires in Brazil?
Mariannita 31:01
Because we are having this problem with the farmers here in Brazil and so they burned the land to create food for the cows. They burn everything so that the green grass will grow again and then they believe they have this food for free for some period. But after you burn and burn and burn, nothing grows back on that land and so you have this wasted land all around the Amazon and Pantanal where you had huge, huge fires. I think you have heard about this. The fires are not in the Amazon but in the Pantanal and it’s so sad. It’s so sad. Here in the mountains, we had some fires as well, they burned and all the woods, because they want to construct. So they burned from down to up in a way that when the firemen come, they cannot turn the fire out. It’s impossible. It’s really horrible. We had fires here in the mountains for a month in front of our house and it was impossible really, the fire brigade would come with water and spend hours and then the fire started again, because the way they do, it impossible to turn the fire out and in Pantanal, this year we had the huge fires in history and we lost many, many, many animals and forests. It’s very sad and I think it’s terrible what’s going on in Brazil now. It’s something that makes me feel that I don’t want to live here anymore. Because it’s disrespect for nature and for human beings, it’s horrible really and I think the world has to do something about. Because we cannot have these in places like the Amazon and Pantanal world that are places so important for the world. All these fires are changing the climate, not just in Brazil, but further on.
Norman 33:38
It’s interesting. I saw a documentary a little while ago, and it’s just history repeating itself. They were talking about it but for years, hundreds of years they’re trying to figure out what happened to the Mayans and the documentary said it was due to clearing land. Really? Yes, that was the cause of the downfall of the Mayan Civilization. It was very, very interesting, just a concept that I never really thought about before. But they went back and they were talking about how they were clearing their land and they cleared so much land to make room for the cities and to make room for exactly what we’re talking about for agriculture, clearing it for grass and grain and what ended up happening is they just wiped out their society.
Mariannita 34:32
But because the Mayans, they were very, very great agriculturists, so they had many many plantations and everything but in Brazil everything is turned into soya. So the Amazon is turning to soya or meat. It’s very sad. It’s very sad when you go when you fly to the Amazon and we did this many times you see many fires from the window of their plane, you can see many fires going on. But now it’s huge. It’s too big. We cannot go back anymore. Because we lost many, many pieces. It’s very, very sad and for the indigenous people living there, it’s very sad because they are losing everything and sickness arrives as well. We had a horrible episode of yellow fever some years ago, because of it, because of the fires, because of pollution. So we have a lot of things that are happening again, like the yellow fever is coming back again in Brazil, because of this. Because we don’t have this equilibrium, nature equilibrium anymore.
Norman 35:57
Like you were saying before, with that amount of fires burning it, what will it do to the climate?
Mariannita 36:04
Of course.
Norman 36:05
Not to say that, just the ecosystem, you’re just burning out species. We may not, I mean, we don’t even know exist, in some areas.
Mariannita 36:18
Yes and it was so sad to see the images of all the animals in Pantanal burned. It was really really, really sad. It was horrible.
Norman 36:29
I don’t know what’s going on. This year, well, this year was a crazy year. But look at the Australian fires. Canada’s had crazy fires too, California and Colorado and we’re talking about Brazil now, but these wildfires and what ticks me off especially where you are, it’s man made. It’s not because of a lightning striked or anything like that.
Mariannita 36:55
No, no, but in Canada, you had fires because it was a criminal fire or not?
Norman 37:03
It could be the most likely because of dry weather. Dry weather, and it could have been a lightning strike. Typically, I haven’t heard of self not that it’s reported anyways, like it could be an accidental fire. The big one that’s happening or one of the big ones that happened in the United States was due to a gender reveal.
Mariannita 37:26
Really?
Norman 37:27
A gender reveal. They had fireworks and okay, so that’s worth wiping out so many, thousands of acres, so you could reveal whether you had a boy or a girl. It’s just crazy.
Mariannita 37:42
Yeah, crazy. Yes.
Norman 37:46
But anyways, let’s talk about a comment that you made that I thought was pretty interesting and I think the name of this website, I’m going to pronounce it right is jupilings, jupilings.com and this was interesting that you love it when people criticize you. It says, I love it when I am criticized. I believe that opening discussions about my works is always interesting and productive and it makes me reflect on what I’m doing. I love it.
Mariannita 38:19
Yes, you know why, but I think when you are criticized, you look at your work in a different way and you are not in a way that you are not used to and so you open discussions to yourself as well and it’s very interesting. I really love the discussion about being criticized. When I am criticized, I love this discussion. I used to work with an art dealer, a German art dealer in Brazil. That was very interesting, because he used to criticize me a lot and I loved these discussions. Because you find other ways and you never accommodate yourself as well. Because, listen that you are doing wonderful things and compliments doesn’t bring you anything but critics. Yes and you can look at you in a different way and at your work in a different way and you Yeah, I love losing stability and embarking in new discoveries as well. So I think critics about my work are able to bring me these instability that is very important for my work.
Norman 39:49
Have you always been like that, or has this evolved over time?
Mariannita 39:54
No, I think I’ve always been like that. I think I was trained when I was studying with one of the artists Carlos Fajardo. He used to put all the artists around the works, and ask each one to criticize the other one. So I think I learned to do it. I think criticizing the other one is a way of looking to yourself as well. So I think it’s interesting, I love it andI think it came from my studies.
Norman 40:38
In the same article, you also had another really great quote and it was,”These images suggest that the viewer should contemplate and reflect on emptiness and silence, which for me, is our greatest need today.” Can you expand on that a bit?
Mariannita 40:56
Yes, I think we have a lot of noise, visually and sound noise everywhere and silence is something that I’m always looking for in my work. So, I want people to feel this silence when they watch my work and I think for me, it’s important to have this moment of contemplation, and where you were deep into an emerge and like you are in the middle of the woods contemplating the landscape, just with natural sounds, I think the world is too noisy, but in every sense and it is important to have this silence. I think people forget to have silence and I always say to Marcelo, that for him, it’s important to leave with silence as well, because he’s a musician and so he is always either practicing his piano or listening to others music, but sometimes listen to nothing and just being in silence, it’s very important because you’ll discover other things and you leave other things come to you and silence is something that people are not using or don’t want to be into today.
Norman 42:34
One of the things I’m really worried about here is when it might sound stupid, but when Amazon has the drones, and it’s just going to be, especially in the cities, but I don’t want to hear drones buzzing around and dropping off packages, it’s gonna drive me crazy. So what are your thoughts? I touched on COVID and just kind of my experience in a positive way, actually. But what are your thoughts on how women have been affected by COVID?
Mariannita 43:09
I was reading about that and it’s something that worries me a lot. Because COVID brought as many women, especially with women with children, because all the women had to be home with their children. All the schools were closed here in Brazil and in England as well and when people started to come back to work, and just the ones that didn’t have children came back. Because until the schools are open, in Brazil the schools are still closed now and women cannot go back to work. So it’s a very difficult situation and I imagine, if you have an employee, which is a woman with small children, and you think oh, a pandemic can happen again. So I may not hire a woman anymore and I think this is something that is happening now. People are afraid of having women working for them and I think we will be back 10 years in our achievement in society.
Norman 44:40
Now that you say that, there might be Yeah, there definitely would probably be that effect. A trickle down effect. But that’s weird. I’ve never thought of that. Hayden, have you ever thought of it that way?
Hayden 44:54
No, no, no. I mean, on top of that, too, like, even we’re just talking about silence and I can’t even imagine the mental pressure of if you’re able to work from home with all your young kids also tending to their needs 24/7, maybe not even being able to return to a job afterwards or, like, yes, totally.
Mariannita 45:16
Especially in Brazil, many people are not returning to their offices anymore. Because the offices are closing, or they are giving back their offices, and people are just working from home and so it’s a situation that may last many, many years and we don’t know yet when schools will return normally. I think it’s something that we’ll have to think about these in the future and it’s changing now. I feel people are worried about having women working with them because of it and I think this will change a lot, a lot, really, the position of women into society.
Norman 46:16
We did a podcast on my other podcast, mode COVID suicide, and so many people. Yeah, how many people were dying from depression and anxiety, taking their own lives. Which, especially the people that we knew, they wouldn’t, I think COVID completely changed your mental health and we started talking to other people and it was like, everybody knew somebody that took their life and there’s one lady, she was a business person in Poland. She knew five people who committed suicide.
Mariannita 46:53
Oh, I haven’t heard these suicides during COVID.
Norman 46:58
Yeah, so it’s a whole other topic that we haven’t really touched on, but mental health and again, men and women, but I can especially see that if you’ve got to take it, and I’m just saying this in general, but if you’re taking care of a family, if you have to be the Superwoman, which so many women still are they take on that role, doing cooking, maybe there is the 50-50 a lot of the time all around the world, you’ll see that that woman that has that extra burden that we don’t talk about.
Mariannita 47:36
It’s true and you have to take care of the elderly as well. You have to take care of the house, and everything, you organize everything. It is hard. I have listened to many women, many friends here in Brazil, saying that they are working much much more now because of the COVID and because they have to do everything to the house and all these IgM thinks that you have to wash everything that comes from the supermarket and everything. So it is a never ending never ending because you have to be careful with everything.
Hayden 48:25
Hey guys and gals, that’s the end of part one. Tune in later this week to hear the rest of the episode. Make sure to join our new Facebook group, where we’ll be posting some episode discussion and even running some giveaways. So get in on the action by clicking the link in the description. That’s enough for me and I’ll see you next time.
Hayden 0:01
Hey guys and gals, welcome to part two of our interview with Mariannita Luzzati. If you haven’t done so already, make sure to go back and listen to part one, you don’t want to miss out. Just a reminder that we now have a Facebook group and you can join in on episode discussion, win prizes and I know there’s a pretty hot topic right now, if you’re on Team Hayden and or Team Norm, obviously, I’m biased, but Team Hayden is the way to go. But you didn’t hear from me. Anyway, that’s enough for me and now for the rest of the episode.
Norman 0:35
Anyways, let’s talk about something a bit more happy.
Mariannita 0:39
Let’s talk. Yes.
Norman 0:42
I want to know about where you are right now, what you’re doing, and then what’s next for you?
Mariannita 0:52
This year, I started the year with an exhibition in London and it was in February. So it was a very happy starting year because I had this exhibition then in March, I had to come back to Brazil, because I had another exhibition in Brasilia, which I opened and the theme of this exhibition in Brasilia was nature. So I was working in some paintings that were related to migration in nature. So I did a study of plants that had migrated through man or naturally and invaded the landscapes. So the whole exhibition was about that and I was very happy working for these and working for another exhibition that I was supposed to have in September, but it was postponed it for next year in a museum here in Sao Paulo and so it was, for me, it was a very busy year and because of the COVID, I came to the mountains where I stayed most of the time and because I was completely into nature, it was very interesting, because I did longer walks. I had the opportunity to see the changing of the seasons and things that I don’t notice in a normal year. But it was very interesting this year for me and I was working and developing my work in different ways because of this more closely contact with nature and I believe now where I am, I’m opened many new paths for my work, because of the experiences I had this year and I think I want to live a more calmer life. So I don’t want to travel so much. I don’t want to be in so many places like I used to be. I want to spend more time with myself and in places. I don’t want to, when life’s come back to normal, I don’t want to live like a crazy life going from one place to another and having to have to do many things all at the same time as I used to do. So I want more quality time and have a more quality lifetime for me. This is the point I am today, valuating the way I want to live from now on
Norman 4:27
I guess COVID has given you a little bit of time to think.
Mariannita 4:29
Yes. Yeah, time was very important during COVID. I think everyone gained time and I think spending time with ourselves is something that we don’t use to do in a normal life because we never have time. So when you have this time and you start to think and to start to enjoy little things, so having more time to think about things. It’s very important and I think time is something that I want to have until the rest of my life. I want to have this time that I gained now.
Norman 5:12
So let’s switch gears a little bit, and what failures and I hate using that word, that’s why I say hurdles or obstacles, did you have to overcome to become a success?
Mariannita 5:27
I think the biggest obstacle that I have to overcome is being a woman, it’s very hard in the arts. So because you were not valuated as a male artist, so it’s very hard to prove yourself at the beginning and the place of the woman into the art is still very difficult today, because we don’t, for example, if a dealer has to go to an art fair, you would prefer to bring male artists than women artists, this is a fact, they would say this and for the art market, male artists, the collectors prefer to buy male artists than women artists. So it’s a difficult position and sensing that in the beginning was very hard to prove yourself being a woman. But still today, it’s a difficult position, because you are not, for example, during this covid period, all the galleries are very worried about the male artists, but not so many worried about the women artists, because they don’t believe women need financial support as much as they may once. So you have to fight all the time with these issues.
Norman 7:14
Now, is that more in Brazil or do you find that globally?
Mariannita 7:18
No, it’s globally. I am part of a group in London that just discusses these issues. It’s interesting, because it’s not open. People don’t want to talk about these now, because they say, Oh, this is something from the past, but it’s not, it’s today.
Norman 7:42
You know what? You’re opening up my eyes to so many things on this podcast.
Mariannita 7:45
Really?
Norman 7:46
You are. We’ve talked about a few things I just went, Wow, I had no idea. I would have thought that it would have been more equal. But you know what? Until you step in the shoes of someone, you never really know.
Mariannita 8:00
It’s true. It’s true. It’s not equal, because a woman dealer would say the same for her. I was speaking with a dealer in London some months ago and she was telling me, it’s very difficult for me to go to an art fair, because I spend a lot of money into the fair and if I bring many women to the show, I won’t sell them. I have to have male artists.
Norman 8:34
Outside of doing this, my job is I work a lot with Amazon sellers. So people that are, well hey, look at and no pun intended being in Brazil. But anyways, I work with people that are trying to get onto Amazon and sell. So I go to a lot of these conferences and yeah, very interesting. I will have an incredible business woman with me, and they might be with their husband. But yet when somebody comes up, they’ll start talking to the husband, about their eCom account, even though it shocked me when I saw because I didn’t really consider it when my friends were telling me this and it’s like, I’m sitting there going, Oh my gosh, they’re absolutely right.
Mariannita 9:22
I know. On the Cinemusica project, I remember when we started to do it and we gave many interviews together but people would speak just with Marcelo, never with me. They would never ask me anything like if I was not part of it. It’s funny.
Norman 9:45
It really is and it’s too bad. It’s still happening like that, and that’s why at least on the Amazon side, a group has started on Empowery, they started a group of Amazon sellers, the event was strictly for women’s sellers. So this was the first time last year, it was an Empowery’s Women’s Conference, it was called and it was all women and they were all amazing entrepreneurs and guess what? So I went, I wanted to go because they were all amazing entrepreneurs and there was about a handful of 10 males in this group of 500 and it was interesting why people would be asking, why are you going and sitting there going with it, you guys realize that there’s all these incredible people speaking and you’re going to miss out on it. You don’t have to be a woman to go and listen to 10 great speakers and now they’ve had a couple more like that. But then, with COVID, that stopped, I think women and at least the Amazon business have got to have a bit bigger voice and that’s the problem. I think ipeople and maybe in your profession as well.
Hayden 11:03
An angle of that, that I’ve noticed, like the systemization of that even more so coming from universities and colleges and relating it back to what Mariannita said about having time to think about these issues and there was a group that was started, mainly focused around musicians in Montreal in Toronto, but it’s spread across the US too and they put together this group of people, it’s called, This is Art School and it’s mainly aimed for women and people of color who have faced any sort of discrimination or had any issues in diversity, or ask professionals to come forward and talk about it in this group, kind of went viral across North America. They managed to have enough people come forward that they started putting together committees to actually go to the universities and ask them to do evaluations of how they’re handling issues like this, and even addressing some of the maybe some of the teachers who were abusing these people or, not being fair, or equitable, and how they were treating the student body.
Norman 12:13
Maybe just not knowing too, it’s bringing knowledge and education to people. That I mean, it might be considered the norm. But until people are educated.
Hayden 12:25
Yeah, it’s also I mean, the way that things have been done over the last hundred years, or even longer.
Norman 12:31
Are you gonna say, like, your lifetime Dad?
Hayden 12:35
Yeah, the whole colonial thing.
Norman 12:39
I don’t go back that far.
Hayden 12:43
Just actually trying to open up these issues and talk freely about them, rather than having them just in the system and maybe you’ll have one Twitter comment about it once in a while. But that kind of gets pushed aside, but actually opening things up and facing these issues now.
Norman 13:01
I’m not sure if you’d be interested. But there’s a lady that was on our podcast about two months ago, Andrea Lake, incredible, really incredible entrepreneur. She, I think she had 14 businesses on the go and she’s just an incredibly nice person as well. But she’s got this group she’s put together for women, called Power Chick Mafia. There’s two versions of it, there’s one where anybody can join and then they have one where there’s a group that meets, I’m not sure if it’s every quarter, but it’s for women entrepreneurs that have over 10 million in sales. But it’s an incredible group, because it brings people together and talks about this sort of stuff.
Mariannita 13:48
Very interesting because this group that I’m part of in England, it’s very, because they bring issues that you don’t even think about because you’re just used to the way the things are, but one day they bring you these issues. It’s amazing, you discover that, all things still today. It’s amazing, really. I think it’s very important to open discussion and to have these groups talking about.
Norman 14:18
Yes, I agree as well. Now, let’s switch this to 180 degree turn. Yes, what has been your most successful event or something successful in your life?
Mariannita 14:33
The most successful thing in my life, I had that dream to go to India and so I did this five years ago and for me, it was a really wonderful experience to experiment that civilization and I was so impressed with India because I think they have this quality time we were talking about, we are very attached to nature. I think it’s wonderful people that have a wonderful character and I really was mesmerized about India and I think this is one of the most brilliant experiences I had in life. I don’t valuate success as career things, because for example, I don’t think, Oh, I did that exhibition and it was a huge success, it was very important. I don’t really care about these things. For me, success is about experience. So this experience of India, that was my dream to go and it was amazing experience and experiences that I have in my studio, creating my works and so this experience of doing something new and achieving something that I didn’t know before and I actually have at that moment, through my work and success, for me is this kind of experience and I don’t have this, or at that moment for me, that was a big success. I think something that happens with discoveries. I valuate success in this way.
Norman 16:54
Very interesting. Hayden used to teach in India.
Mariannita 16:58
Really? Where?
Hayden 17:00
It was in New Delhi at the Global Music Institute. That was actually six years ago.
Mariannita 17:05
You live there?
Hayden 17:06
Yeah. Funny story. It was supposed to be a three month semester at this school. But I ended up getting really sick and had to leave two months that I have left but my time there was amazing.
Mariannita 17:22
It is an amazing place, no?
Hayden 17:23
Yeah, and even just walking down the street in New Delhi, just the strength of the culture. I mean, and how different is compared to North American culture. But the sights, the smells like everything.
Mariannita 17:39
Everything, everything. But so you got very sick. We know a musician that went to India and got very sick as well.
Hayden 17:48
Yeah, I think it’s a common thing.
Mariannita 17:51
Yes.
Hayden 17:53
But where were you in India?
Mariannita 17:56
I was in New Delhi and then I was in Nagori. I went to a festival music, Sufi music festival, and it was so interesting.
Hayden 18:12
Oh cool. That’s what the dancers are right? Like there’s dance and music?
Mariannita 18:17
No, no. It was just music and they used to have this, so this festival, it was one week festival with concerts from morning to night and each concert would have the duration of five hours and people would sit outside or lie on the floor and just listen to this music that you go and come and it was amazing experience, really amazing.
Hayden 18:48
Actually, one thing I wanted to share. I don’t know if our listeners will get any value from this. But one thing, one observation I made when I was there. I went to a North Indian classical concert and I’ve always wanted to see something like this live and the really cool thing was that if you looked around the audience, everyone was keeping track of the song with their hands.
Mariannita 19:14
Oh, I loved that.
Hayden 19:15
Yeah, so throughout the concert, there’s this, it’d be an hour long concert, or even some songs would be 10 minutes or so and everyone’s keeping the beat with their hands and before the end of the song, like I was totally clueless, but before the end of the song, people would start clapping because they knew the ending was coming.
Mariannita 19:34
I know but I was so amazed about that as well because they had this movement with their hands. Listen to the music and with their hands, and they were inside of the music all the time. Completely different audience. I loved being part of that festival.
Hayden 19:52
Even to contrast that with, North North American classical music where you normally sit very still until the very, very and then you clap at the specific time. But it was very interesting to see everyone so involved.
Mariannita 20:06
Yeah, me too. Me too. I had the same experience.
Norman 20:10
That’s interesting and that’s why I love traveling and seeing different cultures. We almost started talking about that beginning where you become one with the music. Well, it sounds like I’ve never experienced it. But it sounds very interesting when people kind of get into the music like that. They become part of the music. Well, I think we are coming close to the end of the podcast, and I’ve had an incredible time speaking with you. I’ve learned a lot. Like I said, I’ve learned a bunch. You’ve got me thinking about a bunch of other things. I really want to thank you for coming on to the podcast today.
Mariannita 20:51
Thank you very much. It was very interesting. Norman, are you a musician as well?
Norman 20:55
You know what? I am not. I wish I was. I wish I was an artist. Those are two things that I just haven’t done. As a matter of fact, I told Marcelo the story.You want to hear? Hayden knows what I’m gonna say.
Mariannita 21:08
Yeah.
Norman 21:08
So I go and I get this tenor saxophone. I go to my parents place, which is like a cottage country, up in the mountains, beautiful. Nobody is around, big lake and I start playing the saxophone and all of a sudden, after about five minutes, I just hear this across the lake. Shut up! Shut up! I think I sounded more like a moose, rather than a sax player and so that was about the end of my music career. I did play in the band, a trumpet when I was going to school. But yeah, that’s about as far as it got.
Mariannita 21:50
But that’s least you had the experience.
Norman 21:52
Oh, yeah and I love music. I’m into every I don’t know what type of music like right from very abstract avant garde style music, right into classical opera, you name the genre, and it’s on my Apple Music. I just love everything. So yeah, I’m very wide open and when I do find a music or an art, and let’s say I find a new genre, it just like another door flings wide open and it just, it’s hard to describe it just feels incredible. You just can’t get enough of it. Like, oh, reggae or ska. Yeah and then you start to I just think this is funny. Last night, I watched a Netflix movie called Fisherman’s Friends and it’s about Shanti music and so last night, what did I do? I went and I downloaded about 10 albums and just before this call, I was playing it. I couldn’t get enough of this Shanti music.
Hayden 22:55
I gotta send you some Milton Nascimento. I think I think you’d like Milton.
Norman 23:00
What type of app is that?
Hayden 23:02
It’s called MPB Brazilian pop music.
Norman 23:06
Oh, okay.
Hayden 23:07
It’s kind of like classic rock, but with traditional Brazilian rhythms kind of underneath it and it’s very, very interesting.
Norman 23:18
I gotta check that out.
Mariannita 23:21
Yeah, Milton Nascimento. Marcelo did something with Milton Nascimento as well.
Hayden 23:27
Really?
Mariannita 23:28
Yes. He has a recording. I will ask him to send you.
Hayden 23:32
Oh, that ‘d be amazing. Yeah.
Mariannita 23:33
One music in a concert with Milton Nascimento.
Hayden 23:38
Wow.
Norman 23:39
That just reminds me of something too. You were talking about the Cinemusica. Is there a video or anything that any of our listeners can watch?
Mariannita 23:49
Yes.
Norman 23:50
There is?
Mariannita 23:50
Yes. There is. I did a documentary about the whole project into the prisons. So I have this documentary. I can send you the link.
Norman 24:01
Oh, beautiful. That would be great.
Hayden 24:04
Yeah, we can share that.
Mariannita 24:05
Yeah, and I have that in English as well.
Norman 24:10
Also, I’d like to show our viewers your incredible art. If you can send us over a link to where our viewers can have that as well.
Mariannita 24:24
Okay.
Norman 24:25
Well, at the end of every episode, we always have one question we ask our guests, and that is do they know a guy?
Mariannita 24:33
I know a wonderful writer, Ian Thompson, an English writer. That is very, very interesting and I think you would love to have him as a guest.
Norman 24:49
Very good. Well, I can’t wait to talk to Ian. So once again, I really want to thank you for coming onto the podcast and sharing your life experience with us.
Mariannita 25:00
Thank you so much, Norman.
Norman 25:02
Oh, you’re very welcome.
Hayden 25:05
That concludes our interview with Mariannita Luzzati. Tune in next week for an interview with Dave McKean and Pemab Sherpa of Sherpa Chai and Sherpa’s Adventure Restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. We dig into a lot of the charity work that Pemba is involved in, and how he went from being a mountain guide in Nepal, to successful business owner in Boulder, Colorado. We also touched on what it’s like to be a restaurant owner during the times of COVID. Anyway, that’s enough for me, and I’ll see you next time.
