This is the last edition of the year 2019, a year where all productive areas in this country had to work beyond their strength, in a stingy environment. It was a year of economic hardship for most of the population. If that weren't enough, we are in the midst of an incredible display of intellectual poverty.

Within the widespread poverty of thought, the government took the decision to transform culture into an appendix of the Ministry of Tourism. Maybe they thought: “Look, in the tourist guides there are indications of cinemas, theaters and museums, let's put everything together”. It would be comical if it were not tragic.

However, while we listened to the stupidity of countless bravados — some that take us back decades in the history of our lives and of the country — what saved us once again was art, with its absolutely unbreakable force. The possibility of still having access to culture allowed the population to turn en masse to exhibitions in museums and cultural institutions.

ARTE!Brasileiros, together with Itaú Cultural, managed to hold an in-depth debate on various approaches and possible alternatives for the sustainability of institutions and the importance of cultural management, at the seminar Cultural Management: contemporary challenges. From there, we decided to start a series of interviews that allow us to hear and accompany other voices on a permanent basis. The idea of ​​a participatory cultural institution is increasingly reinforced, capable of involving the population in its causes, and not just a space for contemplation.

In this petty role, the state only deepens the scars of centuries of discrimination and violence and paves the way for more violence. In art, the answer is an active denunciation. Artists seek to express themselves, definitely, aesthetically and ethically. They search for files, supports and themes that help them to speak. Racial, gender and anti-censorship struggles were present throughout the year in works at biennials such as Sesc_Videobrasil, in awards at both Marcantonio Vilaça and Pipa, and in most national exhibitions.

On the cover, a work by No Martins, from the series #JáBasta!, 2019. On display at the 21st Bienal Sesc_Videobrasil.

More than 100 artists participate in an exhibition at the Ocupação 9 de Julho in São Paulo, engaging in supporting the struggle for housing. Aline Motta, one of the winners of the Marcantonio Vilaça Prize, makes her work a permanent search, at its roots, for the collective memory of thousands of Brazilian families built (or destroyed) in the violent process of formation of the country, based on slavery and the patriarchal. 

Guerreiro do Divino Amor, winner of this year's Pipa Prize, in a completely original and experimental language, names the horse and denounces the maneuvers of fascist evangelical sectors, defenders of already outdated customs, and the responsibility that certain media groups are having in this.

Our cover, a work by São Paulo artist No Martins, who is undoubtedly part of this ethos, somehow synthesizes our feeling, also expressed in the text extracted from the book Critique of Black Reason, from n-1 editions, by Cameroonian Achille Mbembe: “Humiliated and deeply disgraced, the black is, in the order of modernity, the only one of all humans whose flesh has been transformed into a thing and the spirit into a commodity.  the living crypt of capital. Although — and this is your patent duality - in a spectacular turnaround, it became the symbol of a conscious desire for life, a powerful, floating and plastic force, fully engaged in the act of creation and even in the act of living in several times and several stories simultaneously.".

Just like at Martins, we say ENOUGH!!!


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