The Art of Brasília

People from outside of Brasília often dismiss Brazil¿s capital as socially divided, boring, corrupt, and emotionally cold. Apparently its founders created not a vibrant capital, but a cultural wasteland. However, as Sophia Beal argues, Brasíliäs contemporary artists are out to prove the skeptics wrong. These twenty-first-century artists are changing how people think about the city and animating its public spaces. They are recasting Brasília as a vibrant city of the arts in which cultural production affirms a creative right to the city. Various genres¿prose, poetry, film, cultural journalism, music, photography, graffiti, street theater, and street dance¿play a part. Brasíliäs initial 1960s art was state-sanctioned, carried out mainly by privileged, white men. In contrast, the capital¿s contemporary art is marked by its diversity, challenging norms about who has a voice within the Brasília art scene. This art demystifies the capital¿s inequities and imagines alternative ways of inhabiting the city.