Curator Agnaldo Farias makes use of the image suggested in the story “A terceira margem do rio,” by João Guimarães Rosa. He applies this image to a discussion of the issues that affected the selection of works to represent Brazil in the exhibition Universalis, which was part of the Twenty-Third São Paulo Biennial. In his opinion, a crucial aspect of contemporary life is reflected in Guimarães Rosa’s parable of a third bank that implies “globalization.” In Farias’s opinion, the center/periphery binomial has had a disastrous impact everywhere in the field of creation of art. It has ended up emerging in opposite pairs such as “national and international, popular and erudite, delayed and advanced.” However, by excluding the center/periphery formula, we run the risk of continuing with “the enthusiastic, uncritical defense of the cultural cannibalism postulated by Oswald de Andrade” in 1928. In other words, we are in danger of confirming a fact that is somewhat obvious: that the art produced here bears the mark of historical contrasts and contradictions. Such contrasts and contradictions would not even exist in politically and economically developed countries (which are more balanced and homogeneous). Although fragmentation of this kind and hybrid qualities can be found in our cultural milieu, Farias believes that “to make excuses” for those elements would be a capitulation. We would be giving in to the popular idea of “characterizing Brazil and Latin America as a true constellation; in other words, a random collage.”

Agnaldo Farias is an independent curator and professor at the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo (FAU-USP). His first published art criticism dates to the 1980s, and with the passage of time, he became a key interpreter of contemporary Brazilian art. In the 1990s, he was the curator at Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio), later serving as curator of the art selected to represent Brazil at the Twenty-Fifth São Paulo Biennial. Subsequently, he was chief curator for the exhibition Bienal 50 anos (2001). He is the author of an array of books, such as The Piano Factory (on the work of the painter Daniel Senise), Arte Brasileira Hoje (2002), and a monograph entitled Amelia Toledo: as naturezas do artifício (2004).

The Exhibition Universalis was part of the twenty-third biennial (1996), whose chief curator was historian and art critic Nelson Aguilar, with Farias as his cocurator. This exhibition revolved around the theme of the “dematerialization of art” in the final years of the millennium.

This was a matter that drew international interest with the book published jointly by Lucy R. Lippard and John Chandler, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, a Cross-Reference Book of Information on Some Esthetic Boundaries (New York: Praeger, 1973). The book characterizes the period that covers the initial questioning of object art by the Conceptual art movement that followed it. What actually happened was that without revealing her sources, Lippard traveled to Buenos Aires, where she became aware of a theoretical lecture by Oscar Masotta “Después del Pop, nosotros desmaterializamos” (July 21, 1967, at the Instituto Di Tela). She also learned of its implementation in the first Argentinean approaches: Un arte de los medios de comunicación (1966) [doc. no. 750362], El mensaje fantasma and Tucumán Arde (both in 1968). Regarding Tucumán Arde, see [doc. nos. 766316, 751376, 750506].