The Art of Brasília

Reviewed by: The Art of Brasília: 2000–2019 by Sophia Beal Marguerite Itamar Harrison Beal, Sophia. The Art of Brasília: 2000–2019. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Pp. 252. ISBN 978-3-03037-136-4. Reading this scholarly book is like taking an all-encompassing journey through present-day Brasília, spatially, temporally and, above all, artistically. It shatters notions of Brasília as immutable and timeless—a masterfully planned city of the twentieth century built from Modernist blueprints—by addressing its myriad contemporary reshapings. In The Art of Brasília: 2000–2019, Sophia Beal positions peripheral communities and districts in juxtaposition (and often in tension) with the utopian core of the Plano Piloto, in order to present a more expansive and egalitarian, to use her word, vision of the city in the twenty-first century. By way of an admirably researched and theoretically positioned study, Beal weaves complex issues of belonging and citizenship into close readings of multiple and varied cultural texts. In so doing, Beal demonstrates her knowledge of local culture makers and community builders, while also establishing a broad transnational framework in which to situate their creative and performative works. She scaffolds her research in cultural studies, urbanism and geography, by referencing experts such as Michel de Certeau, James Holston, Doreen Massey, and many others. Her work also pays close attention to entrenched inequities based on race, class, gender and sexuality, for which she relies on Brazilian and international critical sources. Moreover, Beal celebrates the richness of Brasília's cultural and artistic diversity while underscoring vast, hierarchical divides in access and acceptance. Counterhegemonic narratives and groundbreaking pathways toward inclusivity anchor her analysis, even as her exploration makes explicit enduring evidence of exclusion. The Art of Brasília begins with two foundational sections consisting of an introduction and a historic overview that together present Beal's critical and spatial frameworks, methodology and research. In these initial chapters, she engages critically with the city's core identity, an investigation that then serves as a springboard from which to examine Brasília's changing profile. Six subsequent chapters each undertake a particular form of cultural text. In chapter 3 she addresses João Almino's 2010 Cidade Livre, within the context of his five Brasília-based novels. Almino's use of differing literary techniques in Cidade Livre, she argues, intelligibly exposes the [End Page 621] city's inequities. Chapter 4 centers on Nicolas Behr's creative nonfiction, in particular his 2014 BrasíliA-Z: cidade-palavra. In her analysis, she introduces Behr's notion of creative communion, which is placed in opposition to portrayals of the city as a cultural wasteland. Adirley Queiroz's 2014 film Branco sai, preto fica is the subject of chapter 5. In it, Beal contrasts the neighborhood of Ceilândia against a "soulless" Plano Piloto. In chapter 6, Beal centers her analysis on poetry slams and the city's heritage with respect to traditional verse competitions. This chapter pays special attention to the participation of underrepresented performers such as women, LGBTQ, and low-income poets, exemplified by Meimei Bastos's 2015 poem "Eixo." Chapter 7 looks at Black contemporary poets who have chosen to bypass mainstream publishing through alternative, innovative and "insurgent" (again her word) means. In chapter 8, Beal offers a content-focused study of the cultural journal Traços, a multimedia publication distributed by the city's homeless population. The journal's content centers on a variety of artforms, including photography, street theater, dance, art fairs and graffiti. Beal concludes her multifaceted study with an epilogue that points toward the city's future, ushering in a Bolsonaro-ruled Brasília and beyond. Aside from negligible typographical errors in the text, there is little to find fault with, given that The Art of Brasília was written with such skill and sensitivity. The focused close readings of Almino's fiction and Behr's nonfiction (in chapters 3 and 4, respectively) convey more substance and depth in proportion to other chapters that examine an array of artists or genres (for instance, chapter 8). Despite this slight analytical imbalance, the author's aim "to be as inclusive as possible" (25) prevails. Published within the

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Performative utterance · Sociology · Visual arts · Urban Development and Societal Issues