35th Panorama of Brazilian Art: Brazil by multiplication

We continue to live through adversity. In 1967, Hélio Oiticica wrote a decisive text for thinking about art and Brazil. Entitled “General Scheme of the New Objectivity”, it contains a panoramic drawing of the artistic scene at that time and the challenges to be faced. Written at a politically tense moment, with discouraging prospects for the future, to say the least, it highlights six characteristics of Brazilian art: (1) constructive will; (2) tendency towards the object; (3) spectator participation (bodily, tactile, semantic); (4) approach and take a position in relation to political, social and ethical problems; (5) tendency towards collective propositions; (6) resurgence and new formulations of the concept of anti-art.

A question, still current, permeated the writing of the General Scheme: how to invest in a new relationship between local singularity and global insertion. In the case of Brazilian culture – and this was put in a very original way by the Tropicalist generation under the influence of Anthropophagy – our uniqueness was constructed by the mixture of different cultural matrices. In other words, we do not have our own essence, a mark of origin to be purified of any unwanted contamination, we live from the constant appropriation of others, we are a collage of influences that never stop transforming. As Oiticica wrote, we are always “looking for a cultural characterization, in which we differentiate ourselves from the European with its ancient cultural weight and the North American with its super-productive requests”.

The six characteristics mentioned above continue to be valid – despite differences in context – when thinking about the art produced today. We seek to highlight this in this Panorama. Without any thematization of those trends, they indirectly permeate the works presented here. Despite the failure of the idea of ​​progress and an overwhelming urban and environmental crisis, a constructive will still persists among us. A construction that is known to be fragile, but crucial to face the risks of disruptive informality. There is also a growing openness of artistic practice to social, ethical and political problems, that is, to an engagement, which is not at all simplistic, which believes in the gaps in which art wants to infiltrate to try to change things – knowing that wanting to changing is not enough and that your impotence can have unforeseen consequences.

Bringing together in an exhibition, which aims to be a Panorama of Brazilian Art, from the concreteness of architectural intervention to the fluidity of dance, including audiovisual, sculpture, photography and words, more than explaining the diversity of the contemporary scene, in which the division of expressive means and disciplines seems obsolete, it seeks to highlight the multiplicity of times that make up our historical moment. The time of the dancing body, the written word and the projected image respond to plural forms of perception and experience. At the same time, it is part of our challenge to articulate the different imaginaries that are contaminated and multiply in Brazil between the city and the forest, peripheral communities and cosmopolitan centers, between chaos, indeterminacy and myth.

Mixing conflicting poetics, bringing other voices and gestures into the institutions that construct hegemonic narratives, revealing antagonisms and differences, all of this is part of an idea of ​​Panorama and a discussion about Brazil. This, at the exact moment that Brazil is experiencing one of its worst identity crises, when the promise of the future has become a terrible dystopia that constrains the possibilities of the present, it seems appropriate to ask, once again, the question about Brazil. The Brazil Problem is a challenge and a mirage: it appears as a promise of joy, but escapes when we move towards it. And with each step, it seems like you're going further. However, you can't turn your back; We must face the mirage, at once illusory and real, making this confrontation the path to becoming less haunted by our frightening collective incompetence. Art is the space available to expand the field of the possible.

Luiz Camillo Osorio
Curator

artists: Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca | Beto Shwafaty | Cadu | Dora Longo Bahia | Fernanda Gomes | João Modé | Jorge Mario Jáuregui | José Rufino | Karim Aïnouz and Marcelo Gomes | Leandro Nerefuh | Lourival Cuquinha and Clarisse Hoffmann | MAHKU (Huni Kuin Artists Movement) | Hand in the Can | Marcelo Evelin / Demolition Incorporated | Marcelo Silveira | Ricardo Basbaum | Romy Pocztaruk | Rua Arquitetos and MAS Urban Design, ETH Zurich | Wagner Schwartz