Exhibition: “Carmen Portinho: modernity under construction”

O Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio) opens the documentary exhibition Carmen Portinho: modernity under construction, curated by Aline Siqueira, Raquel Barreto e Pablo Lafuente, and curatorial assistance of José dos Guimaraens. The exhibition pays tribute to the engineer, urban planner and feminist activist Carmen Portinho (1903–2001), a protagonist of Brazilian modernism and a reference in the fight for gender equality, the right to the city and affordable housing.

"More than a biographical journey, the exhibition raises questions about how Carmen Portinho's life and actions illuminate the current challenges of building the city and country we want. Her work, a collective work par excellence, affirms modernism as a political and cultural project of social emancipation," notes Yole Mendonça, executive director of MAM Rio.

Throughout her life, Carmen Portinho was a women's rights activist, urban planner, art critic, and campaigner for culture and freedom. In the 1950s, she joined the management of MAM Rio as deputy executive director, coordinating the construction of the museum's permanent headquarters, designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy. These multiple engagements, spanning almost the entire 20th century, are part of the modern project in its broadest sense: the construction of a more just society and country through knowledge and technologies, both new and old, in the service of individual and collective emancipation.

The exhibition brings together more than 300 historical documents from different collections, organized into three sections — “housing and popular housing,” “feminism,” and “art and education” — as well as a section dedicated to the Municipal Engineering Magazine, a fundamental vehicle for the dissemination of modernism in Brazil.

In dialogue with this vast body of material, works commissioned especially for the exhibition bring Portinho's legacy closer to contemporary issues: a video by filmmaker, anthropologist, and visual artist Milena Manfredini and an installation by Bahian artist Rommulo Vieira Conceição revisit Pedregulho (a housing complex in the Benfica neighborhood), while an installation project by Rio de Janeiro artist Ana Linnemann proposes ways of living and working inspired by the urban planner. And in an interview conducted by filmmaker Ana Maria Magalhães in 1995, Portinho shares reflections on his life and work.

"Carmen Portinho spanned the 20th century as a protagonist in struggles that remain relevant today: housing, education, art, and gender equality. The exhibition not only revisits her trajectory but also invites us to reflect on what has been achieved and what still needs to be achieved," says Pablo Lafuente, artistic director of MAM Rio.