‘Southern’ perspectives about cultural management: some thoughts

Abstract

In this essay I pursue the idea about what “decolonizing art institutions” can mean and draw on some examples coming from São Paulo, where I am from. Taking the discussions about institutional critique as starting point, this essay points out how we can learn from artistic practices in order to think about power relations and mechanisms of cultural institutional operation. Thinking that the institution itself, as apparatus, already translates Eurocentric epistemologies, it also seeks to present new perspectives on integrating Southern perspectives into its processes. Lastly, the essay brings the concepts of “communing” and “permeability” into the practice and structure of cultural institutions’ modus operandi and provokes: how we can incorporate themes and topics from critical artistic perspective to propose new ways of acting and feeling inside institutional practice?