Covertly political in nature, Antonio Manuel’s work often arises out of the restrictions imposed by military rule and censorship in the 1960s and 70s and constitute a denial of such restriction. Partly as a consequence of the socio-political environment, partly as a creative strategy, he has worked in the interstices of cultural dissemination appropriating imagery and sometimes the actual circuits of circulation of mass communication. Sensationalist newspaper headlines, censorship, the displacement of marginalized populations, crime and police brutality have featured in Antonio Manuel’s oeuvre, tracing the upheavals of Brazilian history over the last forty years. Often focusing on the relation between outside and inside, his work has consistently questioned consensual notions of art through interventions in museums, newspapers or in the urban environment.
