Douglas de Freitas Santos

de Freitas Santos, Douglas
Douglas de Freitas Santos, Curatorial Coordinator, Instituto Inhotim, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Conference Report. December 2024

The CIMAM 2024 Annual Conference in Los Angeles focused on envisioning a sustainable future for institutions. The key questions driving the discussions were: "How do museums navigate the tensions of the ongoing cycles of crisis and change? What does it mean in the context of art institutions? How are museums putting it into practice? And how do we acknowledge different contexts, cultures, and economies?" These questions were addressed from an integrated and holistic perspective by professionals from various fields within museums, including artists who work with community-centered practices or see them as integral to their work, such as Edgar Calel, Ibrahim Mahama, and Mark Bradford.

Mark Bradford presented on the first day of CIMAM with "Arts Education and the Potential for Impact," discussing the history, impact, and essential role of developing sustainable relationships through agreements and listening. He emphasized that effective change cannot occur without truly listening to the community's needs and the desires of those involved in the projects. In this sense, creating safe spaces for work and listening is fundamental to implementing a project that considers education and community work. As part of the conference tours, we had the opportunity to visit Art + Practice, a space co-founded by Bradford in Leimert Park, South Los Angeles, on the third day of CIMAM.

Bradford also talked about how artists play a crucial role in challenging institutional conventions. Edgar Calel, an artist based in Guatemala, presented his work on the third day, reflecting on the possibilities of existence in the circuit in ethical alignment with their spirituality, community, and ancestry. Calel presented his work as a case that institutionalizes in fairs, collections, and museums as exceptions but with the potential to rethink these systems from more sustainable ancestral perspectives in relation to nature and ecology.

On the second day, Zita Cobb discussed the importance of considering place and how culture is the human response to that place. In her talk "Fogo Island: The Possibility of a Place," Cobb, an eighth-generation Fogo Islander, presented Shorefast (Ottawa / Joe Batt's Arm, Canada), where she reflected on how the history and way of life of her ancestors inspired her current practices and how the pursuit of sustainability involves an inclusive and creative effort to find an innovative, dignified, and sustainable way of life. She also highlighted how implemented systems have evolved as if place did not matter, leading to the failure of economies, communities, and cultures.

I find especially symbolic that the words "potential" and "possibility" appear in the titles of Cobb's and Bradford's talks, both focused on practices related to people and communities, their histories, and their desires. Perhaps the path to effective change lies in people, individually or collectively. Institutions must seek to create safe spaces with responsibility, ethics, knowledge, and care for interpersonal relationships for the creation of sustainable solutions on different scales. Thus, it is essential that sustainability initiatives are thought out and implemented inclusively, encompassing both the needs of local communities and the particularities of each cultural and economic context, and not imposed based on pre-existing policies that do not apply to the specificities of the locations. By integrating these practices, art institutions not only contribute to environmental preservation but also strengthen their role as agents of social and cultural transformation.


Biography

Douglas de Freitas Santos (b. 1986) is an art curator and researcher. Curatorial Coordinator at the Inhotim Institute, Belo Horizonte, where he is responsible for executing the artistic program, he co-curates exhibitions such as Abdias Nascimento and the Black Art Museum (2021-2024), Pipilotti Rist (opening in October 2024), and Rivane Neuenschwander (opening in October 2024), among others.

From 2011 to 2019, he was curator at the Museu da Cidade de São Paulo (Municipal Department of Culture), where he curated the performance by Maurício Ianês, the installations by Tatiana Blass, Lucia Koch, Iran do Espírito Santo, Felipe Cohen, Laura Belém, Sara Ramo and Vanderlei Lopes at Capela do Morumbi; the retrospective exhibitions Guerra do Tempo (War of Time), by Marilá Dardot; Arte à Mão Armada (Armed Art), by Carmela Gross; and Allegro, by Guto Lacaz, at Chácara Lane.

In 2018, he held the exhibition “Morumbi Caxingui Butantã” with installations by Cinthia Marcelle, Matheus Rocha Pitta and Marcius Galan, who occupied Casa do Bandeirante, Casa do Sertanista and Capela do Morumbi respectively. He was selected as curator for the 2011 Paço das Artes Projects Season; winner of the 2014 and 2016 PROAC Visual Arts Award; the 2015 Edital Amplificadores de Artes Visuais do Recife; and the 2013 Funarte Contemporary Art Award, at the Sala Nordeste de Artes Visuais, in Recife. In 2017, he organized the monographic book of Carmela Gross by the Cobogó publishing house.

Douglas de Freitas Santos, Curatorial Coordinator, Instituto Inhotim, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, has been awarded by the Getty Foundation, Los Angeles.