Brazil Conferences

This conference was the result of research undertaken in Brazil in spring 2010 and was developed in partnership with the Royal College of Art and was curated by the RCA's Martina Margetts Senior Tutor, Critical and Historical Studies.

Brazil has one of the fastest growing economies in the world and a complex history and identity. The conference aimed to inform a UK-based audience about Brazil's contemporary visual culture, with a focus on areas of craft, design and social change. Key speakers from across the globe were invited to present.

Adélia Borges, the leading Brazilian design writer and curator, gave  the keynote lecture on Brazilian contemporary craft and design and their context.

Frederico Duarte, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Scholar, discussed social projects led by academics and

practitioners, drawing on his extensive recent primary research in Brazil.

Bronac Ferran, Senior Research Tutor in the department of Innovation Design Engineering at the RCA and former

Director of Interdisciplinary Arts at Arts Council England, focused on hi-tech creative projects in Brazil.

Tristan Manco, designer and author of Graffiti Brasil, analysed the relationship between street life and cultural development through graffiti and graphics.

Kiki Mazzuchelli, writer, curator and Brazilian PhD researcher (TrAIN/University of the Arts), explored the influential legacy of Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992), who integrated European modernist and Brazilian vernacular

cultures in her architecture, design and projects.

Cristiana Tejo, coordinator of Education at Fundação Joaquim Nabuco and an independent curator based in Recife, north-eastern Brazil, lecture on the artist Adriana Varejão, renowned for her painted tile installations as a discourse on Brazilian postcolonial experience.

MA students from the Department of Design Products at the RCA - Maximillian Gubbins, Attua Aparicio, Sarah Colson, Alexander Groves -  presentrf on their environmental design project with top designer Marcelo Rosenbaum in Sao Paulo last summer and their response to current craft/design issues in Brazil.

Justin McGuirk, award-winning design writer for The Guardian and former Editor of Icon, was the Respondent to the conference papers and included reflection on his own recent experience of Brazil.

Chair and convenor: Martina Margetts, Senior Tutor, Critical & Historical Studies, RCA.