Some Reflections on the Relationship Between Censorship and Experiment in Brazilian Visual Arts during the Period in Force of Institutional Act Number 5

The Brazilian military dictatorship restricted citizens’ rights and freedoms and legitimised repression, culminating in the promulgation of Institutional Act Number 5 (AI-5, 13 December 1968). Freedom of expression was burdened by censorship, a phenomenon with a history that began long before the military dictatorship period. Applied with less intensity and in a more arbitrary way than in other areas, the visual arts censorship exerted during the dictatorship meant that various personal and collective projects were altered or even prevented from taking place, and it also attempted to discourage civic debate and fuel self-censorship. Paradoxically, however, it also proved to be a catalyst for visual language expansion and diversification. The pressure exerted through control and prohibition mechanisms and the arbitrary, unpredictable nature of the restrictions led to an amplification of artists’ quest for forms of expression that could evade the censor’s vigilance and denounce the crimes of the Brazilian military regime and societal structural injustices. For many Brazilian artists, aware of the developments in the international art scene, the 1960s and 1970s were a time of intense experimentation. They were looking to define a Brazilian-specific identity and role for the visual arts in line with the times, opening up a process of debate and renewal that resulted in the emergence of diverse, radical, and at times contradictory artistic sensibilities and forms of expression.