INTERRUPTING SILENCE: BRAZILIAN MUSIC, CULTURE, AND POLITICS IN THE OBJETOS GRÁFICOS OF MIRA SCHENDEL

Abstract

The Swiss-Brazilian artist Mira Schendel is best known for the development of pre-textual languages, vocabularies of silence and emptiness, and attempts to speak of the unspeakable. The overall scholarly consensus is that Schendel was a singular and perhaps isolated artist who did not try to converse with her contemporaries or respond to specific events within the public sphere. While her series, Objetos Gráficos (Graphic Objects) (1967–68), can certainly be discussed within these terms, these works also demonstrate that Schendel’s practice was neither predictable nor homogeneous. By analyzing and situating this series within its social, political, and artistic contexts, I position Objetos Gráficos as tangible evidence of Schendel’s attention and response to external circumstances. Furthermore, I argue that Schendel’s work around silence was deliberately employed to amplify its interruptions, thereby maximizing her limited but purposeful uses of legible text.