As criaturas do lado de fora deixam o museu em alerta: pertencimento e performance

Abstract

This research investigates the presence, reception, and sense of belonging of bodies that deviate from aesthetic and socioeconomic norms subtly imposed by Brazilian cultural institutions and urban spaces, focusing on museums and public areas in Fortaleza (CE). Grounded in an autobiographical and theoretical-practical approach through performance art, the study presents the artistic work Álvaro as a result of these investigations. It draws on the researcher’s personal experience as an art educator and visual artist marked by exclusion, surveillance, and subalternization. The research examines how colonial and necropolitical mechanisms (Mbembe) continue to operate, while also exploring practices of resistance and re-existence inspired by the concept of aquilombamento (Nascimento). Methodologically, it combines autobiographical narratives, sentimental cartography (Rolnik), spiral time (Martins), and performance as both a methodological and political device. The project engages with contemporary artists and proposes the displacement of dissident bodies into nontraditional art spaces—such as squares, street markets, and urban terminals—fostering contemporary forms of aquilombamento as aesthetic, political, and affective gestures. Ultimately, it articulates art, education, and performance as practices capable of challenging institutional hegemonies and redefining ways of being, inhabiting, and producing urban subjectivities.