Artista - corpo - cidade - política - arte: relatos sobre Artur Barrio e sua obra

Abstract

Important artistic manifestations happened in Latin America during the 1960's and 1970's, a period when several of its countries lived under dictatorial regimes. Unlike the production then underway in North America and Europe, the artists active in Latin America were reacting to a context of ideological persecutions, behavioral coercion, and humiliations. Theartists activity in this context wound up configuring a new way of relating with art, with the Other, with ones own body, with the city, and with the real. The present research seeks to identify and define the characteristics of this artist as well as the possibilities he invented in order to establish, if not another world, at least another utopia. In this context, the work ofArtur Barrio was chosen for its significance as a reflection over this period, specially in the series situações. Analyzing Barrio's artistic production as well as his generation's, we arrived at the idea of the always-political-artist. With this term we intend to emphasize the work ofthe artist as potentially transformative of the macropolitical context through artistic experiences inserted in the real. These experiences had the power to promote the feeling of a different reality and evoke the forces necessary for an awakening of consciousness and concrete political change.