Brazil’s newly appointed culture secretary, theatre maker Roberto Alvim claimed that the arts were being used to ‘enslave’ the public into a ‘violent leftist power project’, Jamil Chade for UOL reports.
‘In the last two decades, Brazilian art and culture have been reduced to mere vehicles of ideological propaganda, a political platform, and the propagation of a progressive agenda that is averse to the foundations of our civilization and the aspirations of the majority of our people’ he told an international audience at UNESCO annual conference in Paris.
‘We are no longer producing and experimenting with art as a tool for the flourishing of human genius. Brazilian art has become a means to enslave the mentality of the people in the name of a violent project of leftist power, a petty project that has persecuted and marginalised the authentic artistic plurality of our nation’.
Appointed by the country’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro this month, Alvim went on to say that the arts need to privilege beauty above all else. The minister met with his counterparts in fellow right-wing administrations, including Poland and Hungary.
Alvim has previously claimed his theatre company was the subject of a boycott by the left-wing art establishment. He was first appointed the director of theatre at the National Foundation of the Arts (Funarte) in June before being quickly promoted. On his new appointment, the culture department was moved from the Ministry of Citizenship to the Ministry of Tourism.
20 November 2019
