The exhibition frames the history of Brazilian funk music beyond its sound, highlighting its urban and peripheral cultural roots, its choreography, its communities, and its aesthetic, political and economic repercussions.
Exhibition View, “Funk: A Cry of Boldness and Freedom”, Rio Art Museum (MAR), 2023/2024. Photo: PR
Funk: A Cry of Boldness and Freedom is on display at the Rio Art Museum (MAR) and is curated by the MAR team, together with Taísa Machado and Dom Filó.
The exhibition is held across two rooms. The first is dedicated to soul music, an imported movement from the 1970s and 1980s that garnered attention in Brazil and also influenced fashion consumption. “It’s an aesthetic that becomes consumption. It was made up of people who had access to equipment, imported records, and who started to create large sound crews to play at parties. It was these parties, held in neighborhood clubs, that preceded today’s funk,” explains Marcelo Campos, chief curator at MAR. The second exhibition room is dedicated to “baile de favela”, dance parties which, in the curator’s opinion, are one of the greatest forces of artistic production today in Rio and around Brazil.
The exhibition also shows how funk is present in a wide variety of cultural practices, giving special attention to the visual arts, for which funk has become a reference point for the aesthetics, political resistance, otherness, and form.
Funk: A Cry of Boldness and Freedom is open to visitors until August 2024, at the Rio Art Museum (MAR), in Rio de Janeiro.
Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) Praça Mauá, 5 – Centro Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Open Thursday to Sunday, from 11am to 6pm (last entry at 5pm)
museudeartedorio.org.br
“I will only laugh when I want to”, part of “Funk: A Cry of Boldness and Freedom”, Rio Art Museum (MAR), 2023/2024. Photo: PR
“We delved into the history of bailes, held under tarps, hosted in various places, but always within the communities,” says Marcelo Campos.
Gê Viana, part of “Funk: A Cry of Boldness and Freedom”, Rio Art Museum (MAR), 2023/2024. Photo: PR
“Bringing funk to MAR means recognizing that it has already conquered the world, internationalizing a musical style that is in dialogue with many voices and represents our diverse, restless, bold, and free culture,” said Leonardo Barchini, director and Chief Representative from the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI) in Brazil.
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