Brazilian Art A History of Resisting Adversity

From experimental movements of the 1960s, moving through the gambiarra aesthetics in the 2000s, to the need for exile that is determined by the current political situation, Brazilian artistic production is guided by a kind of motto: to create from material and social adversity, transforming precarity into a conceptual tool.

There are many ways to try to understand the particularities and characteristics of Brazilian artistic production. One of the most well-known interpretations was presented by critic Rodrigo Naves in the volume A forma difícil (The Difficult Form, 2011), a collection of essays about seven artists who were born or based in Brazil between the 19th and mid-20th centuries. The common thread among them is what the author defines as a “difficulty of form,” in other words a “reluctance to strongly structure the works,” a sort of shyness that is very distinct from a “modern international production with a strong appearance.”

In addition to the artists whom he analyzes in the seven essays, the critic points out other more recent names to reinforce his thesis. The form, in his opinion, would also apply to Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980). It is his famous motto “From adversity we live!” which ended the introductory text of the historic exhibition New Brazilian Objectivity, held at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro in 1967. It was there that the artist would begin to launch the ideas that would establish him as one of the most important names in contemporary art, and not only Brazilian. Further, according to Naves, it was not only because of his artistic production, but because the text was one of the “first theoretical interventions of its kind to be made by a Brazilian artist.”

Engaged and Participatory Art

It was at that same show – which occurred in a context of great political tension, a year before the most repressive period of the Brazilian military dictatorship, initiated by Institutional Act Number 5 in 1968 – that Oiticica presented his installation Tropicália, one of his works that most synthesized his thinking in defense of engaged and participatory art.

Defined by the artist himself as “a very first conscious, objective attempt to impose an image that was obviously Brazilian in the current context of the vanguard,” the work invited the spectator (or participator, as he was called) to follow a mazelike path, walking through sand in a staged environment that recreated a tropical atmosphere with all its associated symbols and clichés – plants, parrots, colored plastic objects, culminating with a television turned on in the dark. Impossible to reach any homogenous conclusion about what such a Brazilian image would be. Or, as the critic Celso Favaretto defines it, “Tropicália does not produce a totalizing idea of Brazil (incomprehensible, irrational, exuberant, absurd): it stylizes that representation.”

A Gambiarra Aesthetic

The New Brazilian Objectivity exhibition would come to influence a whole cultural movement during that time – to include, among others, musician Caetano Veloso, whose song Tropicália (1967) dialogued with Oiticica’s work through its title, along with filmmaker Glauber Rocha and the Oficina Theater Group. In addition, the show would come to play an important role in defining some aspects of contemporary art decades later.

One example was the Panorama of Brazilian Art at MAM-SP in 2007, titled Contraditório (Contradictory). In the introductory text, curator Moacir dos Anjos took up Oiticica’s motto, “From Adversity We Live!”, to contextualize what would come to be known as the “gambiarra aesthetics.” The artist’s sentence and its contestatory meaning – used as much to refer to the urgency of accepting adverse and independent opinions as to the ability to create amidst material and social adversity – is rescued as one of the conceptual vectors of that production at the beginning of the 2000s. It was a time when Brazilian artists emerged preeminently on the national and global scene.

Paulo Nazareth, untitled, from "Cadernos de África" project, 2013 | Photo (detail): © Paulo Nazareth
Among those who were part of the show, the artist Marepe was perhaps the one who best represented the concept of “gambiarra.” His objects, made from ordinary materials, carry an imminent instability, as if they are going to disintegrate at any moment. Or, in the case of the work that was presented there – A mudança (The Change, 2005), a life-size truck with furniture in the dumpcart, but all made of wood, like a toy piece –, the contradiction is in the impossibility of moving, a function announced by the title. 

A Concept of “Sertão Art”

The 2010s, marked by major political and economic instability, brought about another important turn in national production. And, again, the result was a two-way street: despite having been a less fruitful time in terms of public incentives for culture, there was a growing diversity in the profile of artists. With that, the idea of resistance to the adversity came back with greater force.

"Bamburrô", 2019, Dalton Paula. Photo: Nelson Kon | Photo (detail): © Nelson Kon
To use another example also from the Panorama of Brazilian Art, its 36th edition in 2019, introduced the concept of “Sertão art,” (backlands art) bringing the meaning of this word, so present in Brazilian culture, in dialogue with artistic production that has experimentation and resistance as central elements. The uncertainty about what this territory is, where it begins and where it ends, also crosses the proposal made by Júlia Rebouças, curator of the show. Or, in her words in the introductory text: “More than a place, this backlands condition is the crossing.”

The selection of artists prioritized names outside of major city centers, especially from the Northeast and Midwest regions of the country – both traversed by the geography and culture of the backlands. Among them, Dalton Paula, based in Goiânia, who has been standing out with his portraits painted with gold leaf of people from Afro-Brazilian culture, from writer Lima Barreto to residents of current quilombo communities. Or little-known names, such as Gervane de Paula, from Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, a region marked by violence and destruction in the most diverse areas. His painting with the words “Arte aqui eu mato” (“Art Here I Kill It”, 2016), in reference to the book Arte aqui é mato (Art Here Is Bush, 1990), by a critic from Mato Grosso, Aline Figueiredo, was one of the works that best symbolized the collective feeling people have shared since Jair Bolsonaro’s election in 2018, whose process of destroying national culture hit the artistic community hard.

Crossing and Exile

It is not by chance that exile and crossing have returned as themes in current production, the result of a reality of artists who left the country or incorporated the conditions of crossing in their practice. This is the case of Paulo Nazareth, who in 2011 carried out his best-known work: for six and a half months, he walked from his city on the periphery of Belo Horizonte to Miami, where he would participate in the Art Basel fair. A few years later, he repeated that walk-performance in Cadernos da África (African Notebooks), crossing countries of the continent where his origins lie. Nazareth was one 214 to take part in another major exhibition of the last century: Afro-Atlantic Histories (2018), a detailed historical overview about the flows between Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean from the 16th to the 21st centuries.                         

The condition of crossing, central to Nazareth and others, has become, however, a somewhat unfeasible idea since the restrictions imposed by the pandemic from 2020 onwards. It remains to be seen what formats of artistic practices will emerge from now on, in the face of new adversity – among them precariousness, which will certainly continue for a long time along the way.