Oscar Niemeyer's Architecture as Fiction in Contemporary Art

The article explores how contemporary artists engage with Oscar Niemeyer's modernist architecture, emphasizing its fictional and narrative potential beyond mere backdrop. Gyan Panchal's 2002 intervention at the French Communist Party headquarters in Paris, designed by Niemeyer, used architectural fragments and furniture to critique the building's political symbolism. Adrien Missika's film "Dome" (2011) focuses on Niemeyer's unfinished auditorium in Tripoli, Lebanon, where musician Victor Tricard plays rusted steel rods as instruments, highlighting decay and temporal dislocation. Louidgi Beltrame's "Brasília/Chandigarh" (2008) juxtaposes the two utopian cities, while "Cinelândia" (2012) with Elfi Turpin presents Niemeyer's Casa das Canoas as a haunted, timeless space. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's "Shortstories" (2008) includes "Marquise" (2007), set under Niemeyer's Ibirapuera Park marquee in São Paulo, where a child's voice recounts a moving column, blending reality and fantasy. The article argues that Niemeyer's baroque, organic forms invite artists to explore ruins, materiality, and alternative temporalities, offering poetic escapes from modern urban life. Written by Alice Laguarda, art and architecture critic and aesthetics teacher at École supérieure d'arts et media de Caen/Cherbourg.