Dailylife As Utopia: Collective Authorship in Rio De Janeiro Contemporary Art Exhibitions

This paper seeks to analyse collective authorship in the production of contemporary art in Brazil after June 2013 demonstrations. It starts off with the intersection between art, politics and urban issues, a peculiar phenomenon in Rio de Janeiro for the past years. It also investigates how utopia is a recurring term in the contemporary art world. Therefore will be considered the following artistic practices as collective authorship work: creations signed by a group of individuals adopting a single name, the so-called "collective". As case studies, the investigation observes art exhibitions at Rio Art Museum (MAR) and Helio Oiticica Art Centre (CMAHO) from 2013 through 2017. The purpose is to examine the openness to this art collaboration tendency in Rio de Janeiro, reflecting on works that have been eliminating individual authorship in favour of a collective one. Also noticing that this kind of work deals mainly with performances on the streets and in the art circuit. This article observes artistic practices carried out through partnerships in the city's visual arts circuit, in addition to also reflecting on the significant occurrence of collective authorship in contemporary art internationally - which also supports strong ties with political and urban subjects. This approach aims to understand how art institutions deal with collective authorship that produces social engaged works while testing if the concept of collectivity is becoming a strategy for artistic legitimation. It analyses if these works trigger the institutionalization of a new conception on what comes to be recognized as art. In sum, the paper main objective focuses on clarifying the contradictory rise of artistic collective authorship despite the prevalence of individualistic ideas on contemporary society.