A research framework focused on lens-based practices, digital and integrated media, and technologies in South American art.
PROJECT AND ORIGINAL STRUCTURE
I conceived #CONTENT+ within BraSA.Art in November 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. I designed it as the first edition of a serial international platform rather than as a one-off group exhibition.
Its original structure combined a planned international open call, collective exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles, individual awards, a digital catalogue, educational activities, online dissemination and free public access.
The first edition proposed the selection of up to 50 visual artists: 30 from Brazil and other South American countries, 10 from Canada and 10 from India. A complete draft of the open call was prepared as the intended public selection mechanism, but it was never published: applications did not open and no artist selection took place. The open call was one component of a broader curatorial architecture and did not define the project's entire meaning.
CURATORIAL AND GEOPOLITICAL PROPOSITION
I began the project with a central question: how might Brazilian art acquire greater international visibility not as an isolated national representation, but through the construction of a South American field of dialogue capable of producing continental force?
I conceived Brazil as a point of articulation and enunciation within South America. Through the project, I sought to position Brazilian art through its relationships with the continent, participate in the cultural and political debates of South America and the Global South, and extend that dialogue beyond the region.
Within this structure, Canada introduced a North American and inter-American axis, while India established an intercontinental relationship with another complex and internally diverse context of the Global South. Los Angeles was conceived as the meeting point for these different geographical, political and technological positions.
The project therefore operated across three interconnected scales: Brazilian, South American and intercontinental. Its purpose was not simply to assemble representations of different territories, but to place them in relation without erasing the asymmetries and distinct conditions from which their artistic practices emerged.
Because I conceived #CONTENT+ as a serial structure, its first geographical configuration was not intended to exhaust the project. Other editions could establish relationships with different countries or regions while preserving its underlying method: beginning with Brazilian and South American research and constructing international dialogue from that position.
FROM VENICE TO LOS ANGELES
The research that led to #CONTENT+ grew out of investigations I undertook through BraSA.Art while planning a possible gallery in Venice. Although the gallery was not realized, I continued the research developed around Brazilian and South American artists.
When I gave this research the exhibition structure of #CONTENT+, I redirected it from its Venetian genealogy toward the planned presentations in Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles and expanded it through the inclusion of Canada and India. This was not a change of subject, but a migration and enlargement of the original research.
Venice is therefore part of the project's origin and intellectual trajectory, but it was not one of the exhibition locations proposed in the approved project.
MEDIA, TECHNOLOGY AND INSTITUTIONAL HORIZON
I defined the curatorial field of #CONTENT+ around lens-based practices, digital and integrated media, and technologies. This field encompassed artistic investigations involving photography, moving images, video, digital environments, systems, devices, design, engineering, custom-built systems, architecture, interactivity and different forms of technological integration within artistic practice.
I did not approach technology merely as technical novelty or spectacle. Instead, I investigated how images, media, systems and devices participate in the production and distribution of cultural visibility, and how artists working under different political, economic and technological conditions appropriate and transform the tools available to them.
To organize this media-based research, I drew partly from fields of study and artistic practice presented by the California Institute of the Arts-CalArts. CalArts functioned as a pedagogical and conceptual reference, not as a confirmed project partner.
One of my intentions was to present in Los Angeles what artists in Brazil and South America were producing through these media and technologies, placing their practices in dialogue with a city strongly associated with artistic education, experimentation, moving-image culture and technological production.
I also developed the project in relation to the scale, programmes and institutional profiles of MAC Niterói, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Museu do Amanhã, Museu de Arte do Rio and MIS-RJ in the Rio de Janeiro area, and the Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and Fowler Museum in Los Angeles.
These institutions constituted the project's researched and prospective institutional horizon. They were not confirmed venues, sponsors or institutional partners.
THE HASHTAG AND THE PLUS SIGN
I chose the title in relation to the digital conditions of the moment in which I conceived the project. In 2019, the hashtag still occupied a central position in platform culture as a mechanism of public address, indexing, search, collective aggregation, circulation and participation.
In #CONTENT+, the hashtag was not merely a graphic or promotional device. I used it to connect the project to the ways in which images, information, communities and public calls were being organized and circulated at that time.
The plus sign introduced addition, openness and seriality. It allowed the structure to remain expandable through more artists, countries, media, relationships and editions.
Preserving the title also preserves the historical and technological conditions of the project's conception. Its temporal specificity remains part of its meaning.
APPROVAL AND NON-REALIZATION
#CONTENT+ was approved in 2020 under Brazil's Federal Cultural Incentive Law-Lei Rouanet-PRONAC 200521, Process 01400.000488/2020-87, Article 18, Patronage, with an approved budget of R$ 1,366,240.00.
Under the framework applicable at the time, its classification within visual arts and Article 18 meant that eligible sponsorship contributions could be deducted in full from Brazilian federal income tax, within the statutory limits applicable to individual and corporate sponsors.
I contracted professional assistance for the technical preparation and submission of the proposal through SALIC. I conceived and developed the project's geographical proposition, curatorial architecture, research direction and media-based framework within BraSA.Art.
The project did not secure the sponsorship required to enter production. Consequently, the exhibitions, artist selection, awards and public programme were not realized.
RESEARCH LEGACY
The non-realization of the exhibitions did not erase the research already produced. Alongside and after the original proposal, I continued to invest in country-by-country research across South America. I commissioned additional research and developed spreadsheets, artist mappings, institutional references, proposals and working documents.
The research undertaken on Suriname became the model through which I established a method that could be replicated and adapted to other South American countries. The significance of this work lies not only in the artists identified, but also in the procedures, criteria, sources and forms of organization created to make the investigation continuable.
This body of work constitutes one of the principal legacies of #CONTENT+: a historical and methodological infrastructure for researching art, media and technology across South America. I do not present it as a definitive or continuously updated database, but as a corpus that can be reviewed, verified, expanded and critically reassessed.
Today, I describe this field more broadly as contemporary art, media and technology practices in South America. This formulation does not replace the project's original categories-lens-based practices, digital and integrated media, and technologies-but offers a contemporary framework through which they can be understood and eventually reassessed.
PRESENT STATUS AND FUTURE POSSIBILITIES
As of 2026, #CONTENT+ is not an active open call, a confirmed exhibition or a programme currently in production. On this page, I present what the project proposed, how it was structured, the research it generated and what that body of work may still support.
The existing archive and methodology could inform an updated South American mapping, a publication, a digital archive, a seminar or public programme, an institutional research collaboration or a future exhibition edition. Any such development would constitute a new stage requiring updated research, new curatorial decisions, institutional relationships, funding and production conditions.
My admission to the EGArt programme at Ca' Foscari University of Venice in 2026 offers a possible future academic context in which this archive may be revisited and discussed. It does not constitute an announced partnership, a current reactivation of #CONTENT+ in Venice or a confirmed new edition.
The enduring significance of #CONTENT+ lies in the curatorial thesis and research infrastructure I established: positioning Brazilian art through South American relations and investigating how artists across the continent work with images, media, technologies and systems of visibility.