Mobilizing through public art exhibitions

Instituto Lamparina has built narrative strategies for social justice causes in Brazil that combine digital campaigning and pop culture with a strong presence in physical spaces. 

Their campaign Juízas Negras Para Ontem coordinated art exhibitions in streets all over Brazil, to create mobilization around the demand of having Brazil’s first Black woman judge in the country’s Supreme Federal Court – a pressing need from local social justice movements, given that Brazil’s government is made up of majority white men.

Gabi Juns, director and co-founder, explains the ideas behind this campaign: 

Our idea is not to focus on purely digital campaigns … We realized that we can have a greater impact on people’s emotions when real things happen. [Not focusing on exclusively digital spaces] brings this sense of reality. The digital [sphere] is in a cultural dispute of disinformation, distrust and so on. 

But when we take it to the street, we build trust in digital. We realized that sometimes very simple actions, like sticking a poster on the walls of the city and having a photo of that in the newspapers – when we [have something like these posters featured in the] newspaper, [the campaign] has much more impact than [when nothing is] done offline. 

Sometimes very simple things bring a sense of “this [discussion] is real, this is happening”, and that moves [readers]. It’s less for the people passing by on the street and more for [the impact] having an image of [an intervention in] real life happening.

Their murals, featuring artwork from 24 artists and reproduced across a number of cities in Brazil, drew media attention. Juízas Negras Para Ontem Curator Nina Viera explains how the project enabled this issue –  long a concern of social justice movements – to move into traditional media and the national “imaginary”. 

This project used physical space (as well as multimedia) to transmit awareness around an issue to new audiences, invoking new representations of Black women in the media and sparking public conversations.

The impact of this campaign was possible due to the fact that other Brazilian organizations were also campaigning at the same time with the same goals. These included Mulheres Negras Decidem and Instituto Marielle Franco, two organizations led by Black women who have been working to increase Black women’s political participation.