Starting in the eighties, printmaker and Conceptual artist Jac Leirner (b. 1961) gained recognition on the Brazilian art scene for sculpture and installations that make use of products from contemporary life. Her success is due in large measure to a compositional strategy that entails the serial use of accumulated objects that address questions of financial and
sociocultural value, and use objects, such as devaluated currency, airplane tickets, packs of cigarettes, shopping bags, and other items. As the daughter of art collectors Fúlvia and Adolpho Leirner, she understood the value of art objects from an early age. She studied at the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (FAAP) from 1979 to 1984, and went on to teach there from 1987 to 1989. Some of her conceptual works effect a critical inversion of earlier works by Cildo Meireles (b. 1948). Her work bears the undeniable influence of Arte Povera and Minimalism.
Well known London-based contemporary art critic and curator Guy Brett (b. 1942) has published widely in international art magazines. Since the sixties, he has contributed to the dissemination of European and Latin American Kinetic art. He has curated major exhibitions, such as In Motion, an international exhibition of Kinetic art held at the Arts Council of Great Britain (1966), and the paradigmatic Force Fields; Phases of the Kinetic for MACBA in Barcelona and the Hayward Gallery in London (2001). He has written many monographs on artists, including on Rasheed Araeen, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hiller, David Medalla, and from Latin America, Argentinean artist Victor Grippo and Chilean artist Eugenio Dittborn. In terms of Brazilian artists, he has written on the artists known as the Lygias (Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape), as well as Hélio Oiticica. Brett was one of the first international figures to engage in dialogue with artists such as Oiticica, Clark, and Sérgio Camargo, in London (specifically at White Chapel), and in Paris when those artists were living there.