An “Artivistic” Experience of Life at a Favela in Rio de Janeiro
Emerging from a backdrop of metropolises oriented more and more towards promoting the singularities of their heritage, are new forms of interventions, crafted by resistance movements using art and culture to support protests and demands by city-dwellers. This phenomenon, observed both in rich and poor spaces, is the inspiration for a study of an artistic initiative carried out in the favela of Morro da Providência, in Rio de Janeiro, and exhibiting the multiple forms and complex relationships it has with the places investigated. But does this “activist” experience, mediated by the use of the press and actualized by the interplay of imagery, provide the subject – an artist or inhabitant – with an opportunity to be heard? Or, in contrario, should this experience be considered as an ephemeral curbing the subject’s ability to challenge politics?