This article was published in 1970 in Malasartes, a magazine for experimental artists in Rio de Janeiro. The magazine was founded by Cildo Meireles (b. 1948), Carlos Vergara (b. 1941), Carlos Zílio (b. 1944), Ronaldo Brito (b. 1949), and Waltércio Caldas (b. 1946), among others. Meireles, a paradigmatic artist who was prominent in Brazilian performance art in the late 1960s, produced experimental works that focused on political issues and the structure of language, visual spectacles and paradoxical situations, connecting with viewers and following what happens to works of art in the market and in society.
The conceptual artist and sculptor Cildo Meireles, the son of a Brazilian ethnologist, lived in various parts of the country, mainly in Brasília—where he studied at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, and where one of his teachers was the painter Vicente do Rego Monteiro—until he finally settled in Rio de Janeiro. He became known in the late 1960s for his distinctly political installations that addressed censorship, murders, and the oppressive conditions the country experienced for two terrible decades (1964?85). He is undoubtedly one of the best-known Brazilian artists on the international stage right now. Five years after his “insertions” he published the essay “Eureka/Blindhotland” in the catalogue of the eponymous exhibition organized by the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro in 1975 [see ICAA digital archive (doc. no. 1110594)]. In his essay he explained how the artist imagines operating within his own boundaries of sight and feeling. Subsequently, and after receiving a certain amount of critical acclaim, Meireles published a controversial article in which he described his intentions when producing his works: “Cruzeiro do Sul” (1980). [For another published version of this text, see (doc. no. 1110568)].
