Giselle Beiguelman's Interventions Confront Barbarism and Indifference in São Paulo

Artist Giselle Beiguelman presents two site-specific interventions in São Paulo's historic center, using fragments of destroyed public sculptures to critique violence and neglect. 'Chacina da Luz' displays remnants of 19th-century statues from Parque da Luz's Lago da Cruz de Malta, destroyed in 2016, arranged on cheap blankets with police tape, drawing parallels between vandalism and unsolved mass killings. The work transforms these remains from municipal storage into temporary monuments to barbarism at Solar da Marquesa until September. 'Monumento Nenhum' installs sculptural fragments, including a piece from Victor Brecheret's bomb-damaged Monumento a Duque de Caxias (1991), on pedestals at Beco do Pinto, creating 'non-monuments' that question historical erasure. Beiguelman's practice engages historian Jacques Le Goff's 'document-monument' concept, analyzing artifacts as indices of power. The interventions emerge alongside reports of increasing attacks on public sculptures in Rio de Janeiro and broader reflections on Brazil's social decay. They challenge traditional art definitions, operating as perceptual devices that address contemporary Brazilian society's brutality and indifference toward its past.