This text investigates several meanings of the concept “place” in art: space/representation, interval of meaning, installation space, institutional space, and sociocultural space, emotional, symbolic or utopian (where the artwork is executed and with what it interacts). The writer, Icleia Borsa Cattani, postulates that in art, the space where the mixing of cultures takes place is a space of tensions, creating the culturally mixed identity and the culturally mixed space--crossbred identities that occur when we invite the perception of “the other.” In the writer’s opinion, Brazilian art is marked by two main approaches: the modern questioning of the purity of art scene; and the opening up to hybrid creations, to artistic miscegenation. Borsa Cattani goes on to analyze examples of work based on the principle of mixing: forms, styles, signs; the intellectual, the popular, mass culture, and themes and techniques. By way of example, the writer points out the work of two artists: Nelson Leirner and Alfredo Nicolaiewsky. In their work, she finds types of cultural mixing characterized by additions, appropriation, proliferation, and references to other artists. In conclusion, she states that miscegenation is intrinsic to what is called “the Brazilian being.” 

Icleia Borsa Cattani, professor at the Instituto de Artes of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre, presents her analysis of two contemporary artists in Brazil. In constructing it, she makes use of concepts widely circulated in the academic media of the 1990s: miscegenation and hybridization. In this essay, it is also possible to see the influence of the thinking of the writer/poet Silviano Santiago—mainly in his book published in 1978, O entre-lugar do discurso latino-americano. In this book, the concept of “entre-lugar” (in-between-place) is fundamental, even though the critic does not directly mention it in her writing. 

Borsa Cattani is also an art critic and curator. Some of this writer’s more recent thinking on contemporary art in Latin America are “Identidade cultural e relações de poder: A arte contemporânea no Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil (1980-1990)” [doc. no. 1111395], and “As tramas da globalização: necessidade de um novo olhar” [1111310].