Antonio Manuel: I Want to Act, Not Represent!

During the most repressive years of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1968-1974) Antonio Manuel’s artworks and actions instigated, and were many times at the center of, controversial debates concerning institutional censorship. While some of his closest friends associated with Tropicalismo and the intellectual milieu of Rio de Janeiro were forced into exile during the military regime, Antonio Manuel managed to remain in Brazil. Throughout this time he created a politically potent and visually striking corpus of experimental work that blended Neoconcrete, Pop, and Conceptual art. According to the renowned art critic Mário Pedrosa, Manuel’s work represents the "experimental exercise of freedom."
The title of the exhibition draws from Antonio Manuel’s first solo show in 1966, at Goeldi Gallery in Rio de Janeiro, where he exhibited a number of drawings made on pages from a newspaper, which according to the art critic Ronaldo Brito, "constituted a statement of intentions: 'I don’t want to represent, I want to Act.'" Antonio Manuel is emblematic of an artist who actively infiltrated an oppressive system that was driven to keep "subversive" work dormant. Stretching the limits of traditional media, he pioneered Body art and multidisciplinary artistic practices in tandem with participatory preoccupations advanced by Brazilian artists and critics after a decade of debate between Concrete and Neoconcrete movements.

Antonio Manuel: I Want to Act, Not Represent! gathers drawings, films, installations, and sculptures, as well as documentation on the artist’s radical performances, most notably when he submitted his body in 1970 as a work of art for the National Salon at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ). When his "work" was rejected he spontaneously disrobed at the opening of the exhibition. Included in Americas Society’s exhibition is the interactive piece Corpobra (The Body is the Work), 1970, a box made of wood and Plexiglas, containing a mass of straw on top of which sits a photograph from the MAM/RJ performance. Covering Antonio Manuel’s image in the sculpture is a sign that reads "Corpobra" strategically concealing the artist’s lower region where one can pull a string to reveal a naked image of him.

Well known in Europe and Latin America for his appropriation of images from the mass media, as well as his interventions in national Brazilian newspaper tabloids; the exhibition presents a condensed selection of works in which he developed a distinctive visual idiom through the use of the news printing process. On view are several pieces from the seminal Flan series, discarded papier-mâché stereo-molds the artist covertly created at the printing presses of Jornal do Brasil. These graphic works illustrate how Antonio Manuel instinctively understood the immediacy the media provided as an agent for subversion and the dissemination of ideologies to the public.

Works like the Urna Quente (Hot-Ballot-Box) attest to Antonio Manuel’s affirmation of both individual and collective freedom in a time when artistic autonomy was challenged by the military regime. The exhibition also features A arma fálica (A Phallic Weapon, 1970-1995) a photo-novella with captions written in collaboration with Lygia Pape and starred by Hélio Oiticica, Tineca and Estacio from the community of Mangueira Hill. Guy Brett has pointed out that for Antonio Manuel "actions are never absolute and unchanging in their meaning, but depend on the context." The variety of artworks featured in the exhibition: drawings, newspapers, sculptures, and films are a testament to the artist’s position as one of Brazil’s most prominent artists.

As part of Antonio Manuel: I Want to Act, Not Represent! Americas Society and Associação para o Patronato Contemporâneo (APC) will publish a fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Beverly Adams, Michael Asbury, Claudia Calirman, Antonio Manuel, Gabriela Rangel, and Judith Rodenbeck. In conjunction with the exhibition Americas Society will also partner with Columbia University to present The Politics of Camouflage in Artistic Practices from the 1970s, a symposium exploring the experimental artistic drive that emerged during political repression.

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