Rio artists stage show on street in protest against censorship

[Judi Lynn]

Far-right state government had shut down exhibition to stop performance about torture

Dom Phillips
@domphillips
Tue 15 Jan 2019 07.47 EST Last modified on Tue 15 Jan 2019 08.37 EST

Artists in Rio de Janeiro have staged a pop-up street show to protest against the closure by the new far-right state government of an exhibition because of a performance attacking dictatorship-era torture.

Álvaro Figueiredo, the curator of Literatura Exposta (Literature Exposed), accused authorities of censorship after the exhibition was ordered to close a day early to prevent a performance by the Rio collective És Uma Maluca that featured nudity and plastic cockroaches.

This is not the first time art has been targeted in Brazil as the country has swung to the right. In 2017, a gay art exhibition was shut down in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, after online protests and picketing, while the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art held firm in the face of similar protests after a child was filmed touching the foot of naked artist in a prone position as part of a performance.

On Sunday, Figueiredo announced on Facebook that Literatura Exposta had been shut down on orders from Wilson Witzel, the far-right governor of Rio state. Witzel is a close ally of President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office on 1 January and whose administration runs the France-Brazil House cultural centre that hosted the exhibition.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/15/rio-artists-stage-show-street-protest-censorship-brazil