The presence of women artists in exhibitions the world over has remained limited, despite concerted efforts by curators and researchers over more than a decade to amplify their presence globally. The exhibition Mulheres na Nova Figuração: corpo e posicionamento (Women of New Figuration: Body and Position) (August 19 - October 21, 2023) at Galeria Superfície São Paulo, Brazil, aims to shed light on this silenced creative production, focusing on female artists associated with the principles of Brazilian New Figuration during the 1960s-70s. This movement, associated with the 1965 exhibition Opinião 65 at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, represented a departure from the dominant trends in Brazilian art, such as concrete and Neo-Concrete art, which focused on geometric abstraction and formalism. Instead, New Figuration embraced figurative and narrative elements, drawing inspiration from everyday life and popular culture.

Artists like Hélio Oiticica, Nelson Leirner and Antônio Henrique Amaral explored themes from urban life, political satire and mass media, infusing their works with a sense of humour and a critical eye. They depicted the chaos of city streets, the allure of consumer culture and the influence of American Pop Art, which resonated with Brazil's evolving urban landscape and the globalising world. Brazilian New Figuration not only challenged the traditional boundaries of figurative arts but also questioned the socio-political context of the time. In a country marked by political upheaval and cultural transformation in the face of the military dictatorship of the 1960s, this turn provided a vehicle for artists to express their concerns and observations about society.

Women of New Figuration: Body and Position includes 16 artists, such as Romanita Disconzi, Cybèle Varela, Pietrina Checcacchi, Maria Lidia Magliani and Pietrina Checcacci, who were active between the 1960s and the 1970s with many still producing art today. The imagery in these works focuses on the snippets of everyday life elements that unfold in different situations such as domestic life, public interactions and intimate conversations. In an interview with STIR, one of the exhibition’s curators Camila Bechelany described the relevance of the movement: “New Figuration was one of the most fruitful artistic movements in the country both for its artistic community and for its range of influences and dialogues with other movements outside the country. The use of the human figure and the association of popular culture with artistic making to express a means of resistance in visual production are certainly some aspects that still resonate a lot with current generations.”

Paintings such as Disconzi’s Totem de Interpretação (1969), Varela’s Telefone real (1967) and Checcacci’s A Novela (1965-67) beckon the viewer into their spatial realm. It would be overly simplistic to regard these works as mere chronicles of everyday life amidst the urbanisation and rapid industrialisation that coincided with the proliferation of consumer goods. These artworks delve into the experiences of women from their unique perspective, challenging patriarchal norms and advocating for sexual freedom.

The female body takes on a political significance in the works and artists like Magliani and Checcacci challenge patriarchal norms by including symbolic elements like keys, implying a tool to open the secrets synonymous with womanhood. Some artworks, such as Orchestrating or Love and To the Order of two Factors by Teresa Nazar, critique the power structures of the era symbolised by men in suits and an isolated woman within a box. Anna Maria Maiolino's prints depict scenes of motherhood and sacrifice, often conflated with the essence of life. Urban landscapes and elements in works by Varela, Regina Vater, Lydia Okumura, and Disconzi further grapple with women's lives.

Women of New Figuration: Body and Position comes at a crucial time as women advocate for gender equality through protests the world over. Bechelany explains that the image of the body, or objects related to the body, is also the instrument through which the female experience can transpose, in the most direct way possible, the passage from the place of women in life to women in art. As seen in the exhibition, through the different strategies of representation—being author and/or protagonist—women artists manipulate images of the female body to divert it from objectification or to create mechanisms for deconstruction and criticism of media portrayals. The artists, through self-representation, are agents of their bodies who control and reimagine conventional schemes of looking.