Porn Art Movement

also: Movimento de Arte Pornô · Poesia Pornô · Pornismo

movement 1980-1982 Brazil Latin America

The Porn Art Movement (Movimento de Arte Pornô) was a transgressive Brazilian avant-garde launched in Rio de Janeiro in early 1980 by the artist Eduardo Kac and the poet Cairo Trindade; organized activity ended in 1982. Working under the military dictatorship, it seized the imagery of pornography as both political resistance and art medium, while explicitly rejecting erotica, which the regime tolerated. Zines, chapbooks, stickers, comics and artist's books mixed with street performance: the group The Gang opened the movement with the Literary Topless intervention on Ipanema Beach in March 1980 and then staged weekly actions at Cinelândia, Rio's busy central square. Humor, scatology, poetry, body politics and pansexuality ran through everything. Publications continued to 1984, closing with the anthology Antolorgia; brief but explosive, the movement fused formal experiment with anti-dictatorship protest.

The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)
The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)Public domain (credit: Johann Zoffany) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Pornographic imagery wielded as political provocation rather than erotica
  • Street performance and public intervention in everyday urban space
  • Cheap printed matter - zines, stickers, chapbooks, comics - as primary artwork
  • Deliberate vulgarity: humor, scatology and shock aimed at dictatorship respectability
  • Poetry, visual art and performance blurred within a single action
  • Openly non-normative sexuality: body politics and pansexuality as subject and stance

Key figures

  • Eduardo Kac (b. 1962) — Artist who conceived the movement in January 1980 and co-authored the Manifesto Pornô
  • Cairo Trindade (fl. 1980s) — Poet and performer who co-founded the movement and co-wrote the Manifesto Pornô
  • Teresa Jardim (fl. 1980s) — Performer who completed The Gang, the movement's performative arm

Example works

  • Pelo Topless Literário (Literary Topless) — Eduardo Kac and Cairo Trindade (1980)
  • Manifesto Pornô — Eduardo Kac and Cairo Trindade (1980)
  • Antolorgia — Porn Art Movement (movement anthology) (1984)

Sources

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