Cartographies of Difference in Brazilian Art’ at Cavalariças, Rio de Janeiro -ARTnews

Yuri Firmeza, Sem título (Untitled), 2011.

COURTESY THE ARTIST AND QUEERMUSEUM

Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.

Today’s show: “Queermuseum: Cartographies of Difference in Brazilian Art” is on view at the Cavalariças galleries in Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro through Sunday, September 16. The group exhibition, curated by Gaudêncio Fidelis, presents over 200 works by 82 artists, including Adriana Varejão, Alair Gomes, Alfredo Volpi, Cândido Portinari, Efrain Almeida, Guignard, Leonilson, Lygia Clark, Pedro Américo, Sidney Amaral, and Yuri Firmeza. The show originally opened last year in the city of Porto Alegre but was closed “orchestrated by groups like the Free Brazil Movement, whose members claimed it was an apology for pedophilia, pornography, and zoophilia and showed disrespect for religion,” according to a press release.

An excerpt from the press release:

Difference lies at the heart of queer, a term that was originally pejorative but whose meaning was appropriated and transformed in the 1980s during the civil rights and LGBTI+ movements. Now, queer means diversity and the right to exist outside the norm.
[. . .]
Queermuseum is designed to be like a provisional museum of a metaphorical nature, offering a space for investigating the patriarchal and heteronormative nature of the museum as institution. As its curator at EAV, Gaudêncio Fidelis, explains, “it is an exhibition rooted in democracy and a vision of a process of inclusion.”