“1/16th of the Capital”

Lourival Cuquinha is a visual artist whose work touches on the political field, usually based on strict and personal impressions. He produces photographs, videos, films, drawings, sculptures, installations, and urban interventions. His work can be characterized by its interactivity and dialogue with the public and the urban environment. His works have been exhibited in institutions such as the Aloísio Magalhães Museum of Modern Art (Recife), the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, the São Paulo Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Centro Provincial de Artes Plásticas y Diseño (Havana); they are in collections such as the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Art, the Banco do Nordeste Cultural Center, and the Santander Cultural Institute, among others. In addition, the artist has received several awards such as the Marcantônio Vilaça Award (2012), the Contemporary Brazil Award Exhibition of Brazilian Artists Abroad, from the São Paulo Biennial Foundation (2010), and the residency grant in London from the British Council's Artist Links program (2009).

Lourival Cuquinha’s work constantly expresses thoughts about the freedom of the individual and the control that society and culture exert over this individual; as well as about the freedom of art, and the control that institutions exert over it. By acting both in the city and in institutions, questioning the status of what constitutes a “work of art”, his work leads us to think about how artists currently position themselves in relation to the art system.

Through political inflections and poetic force, Lourival Cuquinha's work emerges as an object of provocation and leads us to think about the place that art can occupy in negotiations for the exercise of freedom, thus experimenting with its scope of intervention in the art system itself and in the reality that surrounds it.