Maurício Barros de Castro
A Doctor in History from the University of São Paulo (2007), he is a professor at the Institute of Arts of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). His research interests focus on the visual arts (modern and contemporary) and their connections with popular cultures, the African diaspora and ethnic-racial relations. He is the author and organizer of several books on art and culture and has articles published in international journals such as Studies in Visual Arts and Communication (2019), AM Journal of Art and Media Studies (2018) and African and Black Diaspora (2016).
He was a curator, along with Analu Cunha and Marcelo Campos, of the exhibition ESQUELE70 (2019-2020), held at the Paço Imperial Museum, in Rio de Janeiro. The group exhibition celebrated the 70th anniversary of UERJ and brought together students, professors and other contemporary artists, such as Helio Oiticica, Carlos Vergara, Raul Mourão, Cristina Salgado, Marcos Chaves, Luiza Baldan and Ricardo Basbaum. The exhibition also paid tribute to the old Favela do Esqueleto, where UERJ was born.
Research project
Title
At the place of the other: art, culture and representation
Area of Inquiry and Research
Art and Otherness
Description
The relationships between art and culture during the first decades of the 20th century were consecrated around the dialogue established between the artistic avant-gardes and anthropologists, especially with regard to the study of ethnographic objects, plundered in European colonial endeavors to compose the collections of museums of the so-called metropolises. From the second half of the 20th century onwards, a series of identity claims, primarily involving ethnic-racial relations and gender issues, combined with anti-colonial struggles, especially in Africa, altered the relations between art and culture centered on the debate with anthropology. The emergence of cultural studies and its approach that incorporates the production of media images, the politics of alterity, globalization and the African diaspora, as well as post-colonial tensions, into the debate, brings with it the criticism of the colonial legacy of anthropology and uses as a theoretical tool the concept of representation. At the same time, claims for self-representation and decolonial theory promote a scathing critique of the artistic and cultural circuits and of Art History itself. It is about this scenario that the research intends to reflect.