Dislocations and transitions in the work of Antonio Manuel

Contribution to a forthcoming symposium on artist Antonio Manuel.

Antonio Manuel began his work as an artist during the 1960s when he became acquainted with key figures of the Brazilian art scene such as the critic Mário Pedrosa, and artists Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape and Ivan Serpa. Like many of his contemporaries, such as Cildo Meireles, Artur Barrio, Ana Maria Maiolino, he developed a posture that expanded the limits of art practice, increasingly focusing on the body as a vehicle for his propositions.

Covertly political in nature, Antonio Manuel’s work often arises out of the restrictions imposed by military rule and censorship in the 1960s and 70s and constitute a denial of such restriction. Partly as a consequence of the socio-political environment, partly as a creative strategy, he has worked in the interstices of cultural dissemination appropriating imagery and sometimes the actual circuits of circulation of mass communication. Sensationalist newspaper headlines, censorship, the displacement of marginalized populations, crime and police brutality have featured in Antonio Manuel’s oeuvre, tracing the upheavals of Brazilian history over the last forty years. Often focusing on the relation between outside and inside, his work has consistently questioned consensual notions of art through interventions in museums, newspapers or in the urban environment.

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