If art serves to unleash creativity and provoke reflection, it also has a very important role as a witness to history. And it is thinking of art not only as an image, but also as a document for the memory of a country, that the MariAntonia Center of the University of São Paulo (USP), in the city of São Paulo, inaugurated this week a new exhibition: Imagem Testemunho – Experiências Artistic Images of Political Prisoners in the Civil-Military Dictatorship. The exhibition is on display until the 10th of December. The exhibition presents 41 works that were produced between the 60’s and 70’s by political prisoners of the Brazilian military dictatorship. These works were carried out in different prisons in the state of São Paulo, including some of the most violent places of that period, such as the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS). Among the works there are drawings, collages, woodcuts, notes exchanged between the incarcerated, notes and serigraphs that were gathered by journalist and former political prisoner Alípio Freire and that are now part of the collection of the Memorial da Resistência. “Alípio was imprisoned for five years. He was arrested in 1969. Before that, Alípio had worked as a visual artist. In prison, other people also joined, like Sérgio Ferro. There, they began to discuss art and work with it. All modern trends, like pop art, all of that was a subject of discussion for these people. And they didn’t stay in a closed nucleus: they extended this discussion to everyone in the cell. I even say that Alípio’s cell was a studio”, said Rita Maria de Miranda Sipahi, lawyer, former political prisoner and member of the Amnesty Commission. Rita was the wife of Alípio Freire (1945-2021), one of the artists featured in the exhibition. Exhibition presents 41 works produced by political prisoners during the military dictatorship – CMA/USP, by CMA/USP Collection Knowing the importance of preserving that memory, Alípio began to collect all these works that were produced inside the cells of the dictatorship and set up a rich collection of the period with more than 300 works, which have already been exhibited on other occasions. One of them, in 2013, at the Memorial da Resistência, which was called Insurrections: plastic expressions in political prisons in São Paulo. “This exhibition is a part of a larger collection, which is a collection made by Alípio Freire throughout his life and which contains around 300 works, from images to documents, letters and newspaper clippings”, said Priscila Arantes, curator of the exhibition. “This is an art exhibition crossed by the political question. It is an exhibition that bears witness to a generation that lived through the hard years of the civil-military dictatorship. What you find here are images produced by artists or by people who only developed artistic or creative works within the prison space. These are people who come from different wings and political parties,” she added. The works that were produced during this period portray everyday life in prison, the relationships between prisoners, their support networks and the solidarity created inside and outside prisons. The works show different techniques and were made using materials that they obtained inside the prison space or that were brought to them by family and friends. Exhibition in SP celebrates 30 years of the MariAntonia Center featuring works produced by political prisoners during the military dictatorship. Photo: CMA/USP – CMA/USP Among the works is a woodcut that Aldo Arantes, father of the exhibition’s curator, made while he was in prison to present to her mother. “Some jobs are gifts [para familiares e amigos]. You also have jobs that were exchanged between cells. But you also have works that have this political character, such as the woodcut works by Artur Scavone, in which the woodcut served as a device for political leafleting, denouncing mistreatment in prison, publicizing the political situation in Brazil and of oppression during the dictatorship. There are also productions that served, for example, to command financial resources for colleagues and companions to pay lawyers. This is not a large exhibition in the sense of having an excess of works, but a powerful one in the sense of bringing this plurality, this singularity of each work”, explained the curator. One of the highlights of the exhibition is a series of works developed by Alípio from a photograph and which still move Rita Maria de Miranda Sipahi today. “In this exhibition there is something beautiful that represents love. I think that today friendship, love, all these values that Alípio preserved, are in this exhibition too. Once, Alípio made me a gift based on a photograph I sent him. He took the photograph and began to work with it, unfolding the photograph into various plastic works. This has a very strong representation for me. I have not yet seen them placed in the exhibition. So I think that this will still leave me taken by this feeling that he had so much love”, she said in an interview with Agência Brasil, shortly before visiting the exhibition. For the lawyer, this art produced by political prisoners of the dictatorship inside the cells was also a way they found to transform that space, where they were subjected to intense and traumatic sessions of torture and violence. “This question is interesting because it was a way of transforming what imprisons – the prison and the cell space – into a possibility of freedom. Freedom was not contained in that space”. In addition to these works, the exhibition also features seven testimonials in videos produced especially for the exhibition. “We have here seven unpublished videos that were made for this exhibition and that were very important for this space of listening in the curatorial research”, said Priscila. . Free exhibition is open until January 2024. Photo – CMA/USP 30 years of the MariAntonia Center The exhibition marks the 30th anniversary celebration of the MariAntônia Center, an important space in the fight against the Brazilian dictatorship. “This exhibition is part of a group commemorating the 30 years of struggle at the MariAntonia center, which is known as a space for the struggle against the dictatorship. This exhibition is part of this chorus of actions. In fact, it integrates a series of programs and also has round tables and a whole parallel program, where the discussion about art and the dictatorship in Latin America will be discussed”, detailed Priscila Arantes. “The MariAntonia was a very important stage of political resistance during the dictatorship years. It symbolizes the university’s resistance to authoritarianism in the country. It is a historic monument, listed precisely because of these student movements that resisted the will installed in the country. On the other hand, in these 30 years, the MariAntonia Center has become one of the most important art spaces in the city of São Paulo. A space for reflection on art, for exhibition and education about art. In this sense, the exhibition joins these two threads in an extremely timely way to celebrate these 30 years”, explained José Lira, professor at USP and director of the MariAntonia Center. Between 1949 and 1968, the MariAntonia Center housed the USP Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters, which is currently located on the Butantã Campus. In October 1968, Rua Maria Antonia, where the group of buildings is located, was the scene of one of the most important battles for democracy during the military dictatorship. This episode became known as the Battle of Maria Antonia and involved students from opposing ideological positions and the police. “The battle on Rua Maria Antonia was the culmination of the students’ general dissatisfaction with the repression and its demonstrations and marches in downtown São Paulo,” said Lira. “Around May [de 1968], these students were the target of violent attacks by the police. A high school student was killed and from that episode, they decided to occupy the building of the Faculty of Philosophy. To this end, a large group of students was set up, from various faculties of the University of São Paulo, not only Philosophy, Sciences and Letters, who began to reside and organize demonstrations from here together with students of Architecture, Law, Medicine and the Polytechnic. In October 1968, as a result of the repression of a toll booth they used to collect funds, a huge battle broke out between USP students and some students from Mackenzie University, which is across the street. This episode ended after two days of pitched battles, with widespread breakdowns in the building. The building was partially burned down and soon after, taken over from the university by the state government. For more than 20 years this building was alienated from the university. It was only in 1993, therefore 30 years ago, that USP finally got the building back and decided to create this space dedicated to memory, art and free creation, to free thinking”, explained the director of the center. For him, celebrating the space’s 30th anniversary with this exhibition is important not only for building a memory of that period, but also for provoking reflections in today’s society. “She [exposição] it also brings strength, a memory of the strength of social mobilization against arbitrariness, against authoritarianism and against dictatorship. At a time when attacks on human rights are practiced on a daily basis, in their multiple forms – no longer those typical forms of the dictatorship, but in equally atrocious ways – an exhibition like this suggests countless possibilities for reflection for the citizen in general”, he said. More information about the exhibition, which is free, can be obtained on the center’s website.
Agência Brasil
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