From currency and maps to heavily censored newspapers and television programming, Art Systems explores visual forms of critique and subversion during the height of Brazilian dictatorship, drawing sometimes surprising connections between artistic production and broader processes of social exchange during a period of authoritarian modernization. Positioning the works beyond the prism of politics, Elena Shtromberg reveals subtle forms of subversion and critique that reinvented the artists’ political terrain. Analyzing key examples from Cildo Meireles, Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio, Anna Bella Geiger, Sonia Andrade, Geraldo Mello, and others, the book offers a new framework for theorizing artistic practice. By focusing on the core economic, media, technological, and geographic conditions that circumscribed artistic production during this pivotal era, Shtromberg excavates an array of art systems that played a role in the everyday lives of Brazilians. An examination of the specific historical details of the social systems that were integrated into artistic production, this unique study showcases works that were accessed by audiences far outside the confines of artistic institutions. Proliferating during one of Brazil’s most socially and politically fraught decades, the works—spanning cartography to video art—do not conform to an easily identifiable style, form, material use, or medium. As a result of this breadth, Art Systems gives voice to the multifaceted forces at play in a unique chapter of Latin American cultural history.

Catalogue of the exhibition held at Oi Futuro Institute (RJ) in 2010. This is a volume on the work of installation artist Sonia Andrade. Like other works from this artist, the starting point of her proposal are the myths around the root of Mandrake hallucinogenic plant, worshipped by the alchemists, cited in Genesis, studied in the Cabala, and with its shape that resembles the human body. In one of the walls of the Oi Futuro Gallery, dozens of monitors, interconnected to each other, displayed pictures of the merged roots of a large tree. Another work featured side-by-side, the vision of the same scenario: a wall at the Botanical Garden from the first video of the artist in 1974, and now in the 21st century.