ANTONIO MANUEL, ARTUR BARRIO, CILDO MEIRELES: Brazilian Art under Dictatorship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.

Abstract

In 1970, Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship granted artists permission to exhibit their work in an official capacity in a municipal park. Far from totalitarian celebrations of an industrial and abundant Fatherland, many of the works criticized the state and challenged traditional sensibilities. Thereza Simões reproduced Malcolm X’s call to action, “Act Silently”; Luíz Alphonsus Guimarães worked with napalm; and Cildo Meireles burned live chickens as a metaphor for the torture of political prisoners and the asphyxiation of civil society at large.