Parangolés: Dance and the Activation of the Viewer’s Body in Brazilian Art of the 1960s

peer-reviewed article

Agnieszka Sosnowska

agnieszka.sosnowska@ispan.pl
Insitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0521-0682

Abstract

In the text, the author refers to the work of the artist Hélio Oiticica and Brazilian Neo-Concretism in order to show, through an analysis of a series of works Parangolés, the revolutionary change that has occurred in the approach to the artwork since the 1960s. It is a journey from the artwork as an object to an ephemeral event with its implications, such as the noticing the artwork in experience, redefinition of the role of the viewer, the opening to everyday life and social (as well as political) reality. In her analysis, the author focuses on the series Parangolés, created between 1964-68, to show how dance became for Oiticica a medium of transformation of art as well as of the social life. Parangolés look like colourful sheets or long scarves. They are made without considering the size of a particular body. By wrapping oneself in them, one has to adapt them to one's figure and, by mastering the matter, create a composition in space. They are thus experienced as a kind of mobile sculpture that moves with or directly on the user.


Keywords:

Hélio Oiticica, samba, sculpture, viewer, participation, dance, carnival

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Published
2024-03-18

Cited by

Sosnowska, A. (2024) “Parangolés: Dance and the Activation of the Viewer’s Body in Brazilian Art of the 1960s”, Pamiętnik Teatralny, 73(1), pp. 83–96. doi: 10.36744/pt.1558.

Authors

Agnieszka Sosnowska 
agnieszka.sosnowska@ispan.pl
Insitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0521-0682

Agnieszka Sosnowska – Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, works in the Department of History and Theory of Theatre. She works on artistic practices at the interface of disciplines, as well as on the exhaustion of the modernist paradigm in art of the 1960s and 1970s. She combines research work with curatorial practice. Between 2008-2020, she was a curator at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, from 2021 a curator at the Susch Museum in Switzerland.



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