Entre a margem e o culto: graffiti na sociedade contemporânea

Abstract

The present thesis thinks graffiti practice in the contemporary context as a movement in between, that is, from the enacting and the performance of this activity in various contexts. The ideas developed here are not meant to identify graffiti into binary poles, neither to close it in a precise concept. The goal is to consider that there are trades and relations between human, non human and environments. For that, I adopt the theorical and methodological ideas from the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), especially the work of Bruno Latour (2005), in the description of the field works that took place in three favelas of Rio de Janeiro: Favela Museum, located at the Pavão-Pavãozinho Cantagalo; the Providência Gallery, located at Providência; and the Nami Museum located at Tavares Bastos community. It's possible to see through the ethnographies that the three spaces have some common issues, as the use of graffiti in open air galleries, the reafirmation that favelas are a constitutive part of cities and the use of art to create affections. It's also possible to see that the locals have their own peculiarities, particularities that goes according with connections and alliances that are composed, undone and redone. In this sense issues like gender, removals, city rights, local memories, heritage, among others, emerge from links between actors and places.