Although she may not yet be familiar to audiences in Asia, the late Brazilian artist Lygia Pape (1927-2000) is known as a pioneering contemporary artist in Latin America and one of the leading figures who founded the Neo-Concrete Movement in the region. The Neo-Concrete Movement in 1959 pursued a liberation from static form and a movement toward heightened sensuality through the interaction of objects in real time an.
WE ARE NEARING the five-year anniversary of the fire at Brazil’s Museu Nacional that devoured nearly twenty million artifacts. By now, we know the immediate and semi-immediate causes of this anthropological, archaeological, and artistic catastrophe, from the inappropriately installed wiring that led to the short-circuiting of an air conditioner, to the lack of sprinklers, to the systematic neglect (under the banner of austerity) of Brazil’s cultural institutions, to the global warming that necessitated the installation of the air conditioner to begin with. Among the treasures lost in the fire