Beyond Rio and São Paulo
[29 de fevereiro de 2024]
Being Brazilian, it is common for foreign friends and colleagues to come and ask me the classic question: “I’m going to Brazil to check out the contemporary art scene. How many days should I stay in Rio de Janeiro and how many in São Paulo?" An objective answer should embarrass them. I tend to say, “I think it’s essential that you take time to get to know other states and regions of the country.”
There is a fleeting nature that characterises art in Brazil: in the same way that independent spaces, galleries, curators and visual artists emerge nationally and even internationally in a meteoric way, many of these trajectories, in the blink of an eye, disappear from the horizon. There is something vampiric there: we like fresh blood. Which institutions dedicate their space to visual artists generally seen as ‘mid-career’? Not many, when compared to institutional and market interests in the arc between the emergence of new names and the need for recognition – sometimes late and commonly post-mortem – of figures that resisted for decades.
There is something that seems undeniable to me in recent years – and I will associate this moment with the heated discussions surrounding President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016: the huge role that social networks have started to play a huge role in the institutionalizing of artists outside the main art centres in Brazil seems undeniable. The country has the third largest use of social media in the world (behind India and Indonesia), stimulated by the competitive smartphone prices and a huge uptick in use of the internet after the COVID-19 pandemic. The ubiquity of the networks bears some responsibility for some of the country’s most recent traumas, from the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 to the fake new around vaccines. But for art, it has only been positive, allowing visual arts agents from places geographically distant from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo – states that concentrate not only a large number of institutions for the visual arts but also with many voters and enormous circulation of capital and tourists – to gain prominence.
This movement ensures that their practices and spaces are known, at least virtually, nationwide and this visibility bring some opportunities to carry out specific projects in the Southeast of the country – something otherwise economically unsustainable for the working class in Brazil. This back and forth generates sparks in the Brazilian visual arts scene and, even if still nascent, is slowly contributing to an invention of a new ‘Brazilian art’ that is less white, less elitist, less phallocentric, and less heteronormative.
Let’s start in the centre-west of Brazil, where planned modernist cities such as Brasília, the country’s capital since 1960, and Goiânia, founded in 1933, are located. With an economy based on agriculture, the region nonetheless boasts figures such as Aline Figueiredo, a critic who has done much to popularize artists such as Conceição dos Bugres, and Divino Sobral, a curator and artist himself who has similarly, organized important projects on the art scene of the region. There are also those artists from previous generations who circulated both nationally and internationally, including Adir Sodré and his Pop-infused canvases, Gervane de Paula and his social engaged painting, Humberto Espíndola, whose work has long been interested in cattle culture, and Vitória Basaia and her ecologically minded engravings and sculpture, who operates her own house museum. More recently, Dalton Paula is an artist who has gained considerable prominence, included in this year’s Venice Biennale. In 2021, he founded Sertão Negro, a studio school that has shaken up the local art scene. The project joins others recently created that demonstrate an effervescent artistic scene in the region. Good examples are Ateliê Barranco (Anápolis), Galeria Cerrado (Goiânia), and Pé Vermelho Espaço Contemporâneo (Planaltina), as well as the Museu de Arte e Cultura Popular of the Federal University of Mato Grosso, created in 1974 and with an impressive collection of contemporary art.
In August 2023, in the city of Belém do Pará, in the north of Brazil, the first edition of the Bienal das Amazônias opened. This event is dedicated to the many Amazons of Latin America, crossing colonial-demarcated international borders, with more than three thousand indigenous territories. With more than one hundred artists, the biennial brought together not only Amazonian artists but also established names whose trajectory problematizes the notion of territory and belonging, like Anna Bella Geiger, and Adriana Varejão. The biennial approached the Amazon from a multiterritorial and even transhistorical perspective, a position that reflects research common to many institutions and cultural agents in the North of Brazil: in the state of Acre, we have artist Ibã Huni Kuin and the Movimento de Artistas Huni Kuin, while the Associação Fotoativa has been operating for four decades, an important centre for production and reflection on photography in Belém. Let’s also not forget Galeria do Largo, in Manaus, Amazonas, with a programme of artists from the state of Amazonas.
Meanwhile, in the nine northeastern states of the country, there has been a boom in museums and independent art spaces opening in recent years. Since 2022, the Pinacoteca do Ceará in Fortaleza impresses with the quality of its exhibitions and the discussions it has raised in the public sphere about freedom, right after a conservative politician shared some exhibited artworks in a social network, taking them out of context. Chico da Silva, one of the country’s greatest modernist artists, initially celebrated in his lifetime only to die penniless (but cited as inspiration by two of the country biggest indigenous artist names Denilson Baniwa and, before his death, Jaider Esbell) had a panoramic exhibition at the institution recently. At the same time, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bahia in Salvador opened in October last year and dedicated a solo exhibition to Ayrson Heráclito, an artist from the state with a deep research through performance, photography, video, on the rituals and layers of interpretation in the cultures of candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion. Salvador seems to be boiling: Pivô and the Galatea gallery, both headquartered in São Paulo, have opened venues there, as well as the Nonada gallery, from Rio de Janeiro: perhaps some Southeastern institutions are trying to learn from the north-east art scene and culture. Expanding to other states in the region, Chão SLZ, in São Luís, in Maranhão, continues to welcome artists for residencies and exhibitions constantly, and Galeria Mercado Velho, in Teresina, in the state of Piauí, created in 2018, continues to be an essential space of exhibitions. Usina de Arte, a deactivated sugar factory transformed into an art space in Água Preta, in Pernambuco, recently received a commissioned work from Marina Abramović.
And what could we say about the south of Brazil? Generally seen as a more politically conservative region (in which 72 percent of respondents to the census declare themselves as white) the three states that make up the area still have histories of experimentation. The Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, from 2005, is one of the few foundations managed by artists in Brazil, acquiring works of contemporary art, publishing, and organising temporary exhibitions. Porto Alegre, the city where the Mercosul Biennial has happened since 1997 (which I’ll be curating this year), has a significant number of independent spaces and museums, such as the Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Rio Grande do Sul, created in 1992, and Espaço Força & Luz, which in recent years it has become an important stage for a zennial generation of artists. In Florianópolis, in the state of Santa Catarina, the Memorial Meyer Filho, created in 2004 in a tribute to the great modernist artist Ernesto Meyer Filho, maintains its experimental program dedicated to contemporary art, while in Curitiba, the capital of Paraná, the Museu Paranaense, the third oldest museum in the country has been rethinking its collection in a fictional way, remixing colonial artifacts with commissioned contemporary artists, paying special attention in recent years to indigenous artists.
If on this textual trip of ours – which can certainly be seen as criminal since it condenses and presents so few names – we return to the Brazilian southeast and maintain our blind eye to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the first institution that stands out is Inhotim, in Brumadinho, in the state of Minas Gerais. It was founded by one of the country’s bigger collectors in 2006 as one of the largest open-air museums in the world. More recently it has revised its principles and dedicated its programming to rethinking the presence, until recently non-existent, of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous artists in its space, like Abdias do Nascimento, Mestre Didi and Rubem Valentim. The city of Belo Horizonte continues to be the birthplace of dozens of artists who are gradually gaining recognition, such as Froiid, known for his dialogue with digital cultures, and Luana Vitra, an artist whose sculpture and installation plays off the local area’s industrial and mining heritage, as well as reminding us of names from previous generations that started in the same city, including Cinthia Marcelle, Lais Myrrha and Rivane Neuenschwander. In Vitória, in the state of Espírito Santo, the Museu de Arte do Espírito Santo, the Galeria Homero Massena, and the recently created Parque Cultural Casa do Governador demonstrate that, yes, this territorially small state also has a vibrant and experimental art scene.
My biggest question is always: how long will these initiatives last? How long will these artists receive the support they need? Many are at the mercy of elections in a country whose large-scale institutional projects are often linked to federal, state, and municipal public authorities. Meanwhile, many regions still lack solid traditions of collecting and patronage in the visual arts field. Even with the sum of energy on the part of individuals behind these initiatives, sometimes their desires do not always equate with figures in power and access to money, and face endless difficulties.
Are there ways for artists who are on the road to recognition, to achieve a career without paying a toll to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo? Is there a way to have a national and international projection by navigating other routes? Are there alternative ways in which artists and curators can travel with their projects and create inter-regional connections that do not depend on the approval of these two great poles that dictate a particular notion of ‘Brazilian art’?
The answers will, as always, be constantly changing. Meanwhile, many people are trying to write other narratives in contemporary times and revising previous generations. As the meme would say, ‘I’m Brazilian, and I never give up.’ In the meantime, we invite our gringo friends who want to research the ‘Brazilian art scene’ to stay longer, leave their safe places, and expand their universe beyond the limits between Avenida Paulista and Ipanema Beach. In other words, please, do proper research.
(texto feito para a edição “Brazil” da ArtReview publicada em 2024 por ocasião da 60a Bienal de Veneza)