Tearing down to build: Racial and gender presences and absences in the Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Ceará

Abstract

Understanding museums as spaces for the preservation, dissemination and construction of memory, this study analyzed the collection of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Ceará (MAC/CE) aiming at understanding who were the artists whose aesthetic productions made up the institution's collection in racial and gender terms. The research then intertwined sociology of art with sociology of ethnic-racial relations and sociology of gender, with a special focus on black feminist theories, for the purpose of answering the question: what is the role of raciality and gender in the process of legitimizing artists in the field of Brazilian contemporary art? This article describes the research process and its results (which include an exhibition held at MAC/CE), presenting the absences and presences in the collection in question. Despite common sense taking the universe of visual arts 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 that took part in the collection, indicates that the standards established in the surrounding society are also made present in the art world.

Keywords
contemporary art; gender; raciality; legitimation; Brazil