Brazilian artist Antonio Manuel will be exhibiting his work in October at the newly established Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art, with the exhibition opening coinciding with the inauguration of the Centre.

As part of the Trust’s expanding activity in the visual arts, the Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art will play host to approximately four international artists yearly, acting as a space where artists can create and present their work in situ.

Antonio Manuel began his career as an artist in Rio de Janeiro during the late 1960s. Like many of his contemporaries, such as Cildo Meireles, Artur Barrio, Ana Maria Maiolino, and Helio Oiticica, he developed a posture that expanded the limits of art practice. Partly as a consequence of the socio-political environment, partly a creative strategy, he worked in the interstices of cultural dissemination. Sensationalist newspaper headlines, censureship, the displacement of marginalized populations, crime and police brutality have featured in Antonio Manuel’s oeuvre, tracing the upheavals of Brazilian history over the last forty years. Often focusing on the relation between outside and inside, his work has consistently questioned the legitimacy of the spaces for the dissemination of art whether the museum, the newspaper or the urban environment.

Antonio Manuel lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. He is represented by Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Antonio Manuel began his work as an artist during the 1960s when he became acquainted with key figures of the Brazilian art scene such as the critic Mario Pedrosa, and artists Lygia Clark, Helio Oiticica, Lygia Pape and Ivan Serpa. He took part in Helio Oiticica’s Tropicalia event at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro in 1967 and created a polemic at that same institution in 1970 with ‘the Body is the Work’. During the 1970s he produced a series of short-films that were awarded at various festivals. He has exhibited internationally in major museums, Biennials, and galleries and has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Jeu de Paume in Paris, Museu Serralves in Porto and the Helio Oiticica Centre in Rio de Janeiro.

Ocupations / Discoveries
At the Pharos Contemporary Art Centre, Antonio Manuel will construct an installation that allows recontextualisation. Conceived in relation to the celebrations of five centuries since the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese, the installation has also dialogued with the legacy of Brazilian modern architecture and now opens itself as a response to the topology of the divided city of Nicosia. The exhibition will also include a specially commissioned work and performance relating to events that have marked the recent political agenda of Cyprus.

The exhibition is curated by Michael Asbury, Research Fellow at the Centre for Transnational Art Identity and Nation, University of the Arts London.