Of Adversity We Live: Hélio Oiticica, Decolonized Avant-Garde and Global Art
Of Adversity We Live: Hélio Oiticica, Decolonized Avant-Garde and Global Art

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the works and writings of Brazilian visual artist Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980) as a way to rethink the notions of global art, especially through the lens of the artist’s unique vision of a decolonial avant-garde, against the background of Arthur Danto’s and Hans Belting’s theories concerning the end of art history. Oiticica's entire work is set against the double trap that haunts artists in the geopolitical silent zones of the art world: submission to the international art trends, at risk of becoming mere epigones following the footsteps of what is current in the art world’s centers, or the equally melancholic condemnation to a nativist art that doesn’t transcend it’s local status and can only come in to the international spotlight as the object of some form of “white savior” primitivism.

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