Artes de rua por um ICA subversivo: comunicações urbano-visuais via apropriação das paredes no Instituto de Cultura e Arte da UFC

Abstract

This study intends to analyze the urban-visual expressions present at the Institute ofCulture and Art (ICA) of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC). It aims to understandhow these practices function as forms of subversion of institutional space,transforming the Institute's walls into media for communication and repositories ofstudent memory. To reach this outcome, the study adopts a qualitative approachbased in an interdisciplinary literature review, bringing together Foucault'sperspective on relations of discipline and control (1999), Pross's media theory (1971),and the developments proposed by Baitello Junior (2000), in order to perceive theseinscriptions as extensions of students' bodies. Additionally, the concept of thepalimpsest, as discussed by Pesavento (2004), is applied to decode the layers andtemporalities engrained in the Institute's walls. Methodologically, the research drawson photographic documentation and interviews with individuals connected to theinscriptions found at the ICA and to the field of urban culture, seeking to apprehendthe dynamics surrounding the production and persistence of these manifestationswithin the institutional space. The findings demonstrate that the emergence of theselanguages at the institute reflects the urban culture influence on the youth andpolitical polarization in Brazil through the last years. We even venture to say that theuniversity education democratization processes in the country have taken part in thisgeneration of stresses about the normalization patterns in the university environmentof the ICA. In this context, a generation influenced by urban cultures producedtensions against the normative standards governing the institutional environment.Within this panorama, the first inscriptions emerged as markers of resistance to thesenorms, transforming the walls into a visual ecosystem in which layers of expressions,temporalities, and street art languages coexist. The study also includes an analysisof the 2024 Communication Week (SECOM) as evidence of the student community'sappreciation of these artistic practices by incorporating records of the inscriptions intothe event's visual identity and adopting urban culture as the main axis of its activities.Therefore, it is concluded that the urban-visual expressions present at the ICA workas forms of resistance to mechanisms of institutional control and have becomeestablished as media of communication and repositories of the memory of universityexperiences within the Institute.