The Public Aesthetics of Religion in Contemporary Brazilian Secularism

This paper takes two case studies from a contemporary art museum in São Paulo, Brazil, as a critical point of departure for the study of secularism in Brazil. It examines how two shows, by Adriana Varejão and Ayrson Heráclito, both at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, offered different formulations of the relationship between religion and art. This paper takes these two case studies as a key point of departure for studying the secular in Brazil. Building on earlier secularism works, this paper analyzes museums as a secularizing force, analyzing how they direct, discipline, and frame forms of religion for the public. How do practices of creating discourse (e.g. exhibitions, work descriptions, wall texts, catalogs), placing material into space (i.e. expography), and staging encounters between art, artists, and viewers constitute and perform a secular aesthetic? How does this help us understand the aesthetics of the secular in Brazil and more broadly?