In this episode of Culture in a Time of Crises, Ernesto Neto, a visual artist based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, talks to Shwetal A. Patel. Neto talks about his early years in Rio before discovering his passion for art, his spiritual journey after visiting the Huni Kuin tribe in the Amazonian state of Acre and his vision of arts role in society. Neto also talks passionately about Brazil’s musical and cultural traditions, its pre-colonial history and how to integrate indigenous knowledge systems into modern ways of living. The globally acclaimed sculptor also shares his experience with tribal expressions through music, dance, song, and oral history. Now with the pandemic devastating his country, Neto ruminates on mother earth and nature, and what the future holds for the next generation.
“I think art, in this society that we are, is the only place of subjectiveness. It’s important for us to cultivate that, and for us to transform, to have less spectacle and more ritualisation. All these sculptures that I have done, that you have seen, for instance at the [Sao Paulo] Biennale, with all the children, the sculpture with the indigenous presence, there is the idea of ritualism in it.”
– Ernesto Neto, Visual Artist