Page 100 - ARTE!Brasileiros #38

ART AS RESISTANCE ENGLISH VERSION

EDITORIAL | PAGE 16
CONSTANT AND PERMANENT

BY PATRICIA ROUSSEAUX, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR AND GUSTAVO FIORACCI, EDITOR
ART RESISTS because through it we can escape or confront
ourselves It inevitably escapes normativity, in the artist’s fantasy
or delirium that involves the view of the other, who observes,
interprets and sees himself interpreted.
One way or another, an artist’s creation always winds up
questioning what we know. Convinced of something, we come
across it. At stake in a work we may find from the intrinsic
resistance of the form, this intricate set of forces that binds us,
to the surrounding that supports it, the context in which it is
created and its own reason of being.
This issue ended up finding expressions by national and
international artists, by institutions, curators, citizens,
intellectuals and collectors whose initiatives expressed resistance
in a moment were freedoms and the achievements of society and
thought are curtailed. This is happening at this precise moment
in the United States. Unprecedentedly, the world witnessed, in
the first months of 2017, the reaction of the arts circuit against
the arbitrary actions of President Donald Trump. Mariana
Tessitore’s text describes us the exact moment when works and
demonstrations by American artists and institutions converged
to express the rebuttal against the Republican’s xenophobic and
sexist measures.
The British-Indian Anish Kapoor evoked the work of the German
Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) in his manifesto. No wonder Beuys
is being brought to the fore. He stood for the direct contact
with the viewers and the artist’s active participation in crucial
political issues.
A major American museum, MoMa, also expressed its protest,
exhibiting works by artists from Iraq, Iran and other countries
of Islamic majority. Christo, Barbara Kruger, Richard Serra and
Richard Prince also took a stance.
These are more immediate actions carried out by art in politics.
But resistance takes other forms when it understands the
bewildering debate on the limit between madness and reason.
Lugares do Delírio (Places of Delirium), at Museu de Arte do Rio,
merges the works by psychiatric patients with those of “sane”
artists, endorsed by the market. This distinction becomes fuzzy
when the common field of action is art. The frequent image of
boats on the madness symbology reinstates us in our inconstant
relationship with the world, as if we were all crazy, adrift and
subject to the many displacements of the notion of common sense.
Surely the graffiti in São Paulo, following the conflict with the
public authorities, could not be left out of this issue. Only our
proposal was not to thoroughly review the case. We went for an
outsider focus – to go through the city’s peripheric and central
areas to grasp how graffiti artists occupy the different territories
in the city, both political and geographical.
Enjoy your reading!
1 | DETAIL FROM THE WORK OLHO CARNÍVORO (CARNIVOROUS EYE), BY ADRIANA VAREJÃO,
2013/2016, DIGITAZED PHOTOGRAPH, 20 X 16 CM, EDITION: 1/100 + 10 RESERVED TO
THE ARTIST

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