Tearing Down to Build

Presences and absences in the Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Ceará

Abstract

Understanding museums as spaces of preservation and dissemination of memory, as a subproject of an ongoing post-doctoral research, the collection of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Ceará (MAC/CE) was investigated. The goal of the research was to understand who were the artists whose aesthetic productions make up the institution's collection in racial and gender terms. The research intersected, then, the sociology of art with the sociology of ethnic-racial relations and the sociology of gender, with special focus on black feminist theories. Having as working question: what is the role of raciality and gender in the process of legitimization of artists in the field of contemporary Brazilian art? This article deals, therefore, with the research process and its results (which include an exhibition held at MAC/CE), presenting the absences and presences in the collection in question. Although common sense takes the universe of art as a space of freedom, whose rules would be less rigid and discriminatory, the research, which also included the application of a questionnaire with artists from the collection, indicates that the standards established in the surrounding society are also present in the world of art.