Rio exhibition shut down over censorship of performance critiquing dictatorship

In a surprising move, officials in Rio de Janeiro closed the Literatura exposta exhibition at Casa França-Brasil before it was supposed to end. Ruan Lira, the city's culture secretary, cited the organizers' failure to secure municipal approval for the exhibition's content as the reason. This shutdown also meant that a performance scheduled for Sunday by the group És Uma Maluca, which included two nude women reading a script against torture from Brazil's military dictatorship (1964-1985), could not take place. Earlier, the director had already censored an installation featuring plastic cockroaches and speeches by President Jair Bolsonaro. On Monday night, artists staged a protest outside the venue. Curator Alvaro Figueiredo noted that the intervention was requested by Rio's new governor, Wilson Witzel, a Bolsonaro ally.