By SERGIO COHN*

In times of challenged hegemonies, art from the Global South does not ask for permission: it writes its own script. The BRICS Arts Association is more than a platform — it is a manifesto of reinvention, where friendship becomes the foundation and culture, a political act of freedom.

We are living in a unique historical moment. The weakening of the cultural hegemony of the United States-Europe axis and the rise of the Global South, especially the BRICS bloc, create a rare window to rethink the structures of international cultural policy. Instead of simply adapting to an inherited logic, we have the opportunity – and the challenge – to propose new forms of relationship, circulation and cultural creation between countries, especially in the Global South.

For decades, international cultural policy has been shaped by a dynamic of ephemeral events, fairs and festivals whose curation was concentrated mainly in a few capitals of the global North. This market logic – which treats countries of the South as “market reserves”, much more recipients than producers of culture – still persists, even with technological advances that allow the direct and decentralized dissemination of knowledge.

If there is a glaring contradiction in our time, it is this: the more agile and efficient the means of communication and dissemination become with new technologies, the more the structures of legitimacy remain concentrated. The result is a homogenization of the repertoire. It is not uncommon to find, in cities as disparate as São Paulo, Mexico City or Luanda, the same artists – almost always validated by large European or North American companies. In the second decade of the 21st century, with all the revolution of digital technology, the Global South continues to consume a culture chosen by the gaze of the outside.

An eye-opening experience

In 2008, when I was invited by the Itamaraty to travel to Mexico City to launch an anthology of Brazilian poetry, I had a disturbing experience. As I entered a street bookstore, I felt, for a moment, that I was back in Brazil. This brief mental lapse led me to wonder what could have happened.

Then I realized: the titles and covers on the shelves were all too familiar, the same ones I saw in my country. It was a time when major Spanish publishing groups were consolidating their presence in Brazil, and the visual and editorial similarity between the catalogs of the two countries was just the most visible symptom of a deeper phenomenon: the concentration of cultural references.

The question that arises is simple but powerful: are the Chinese, Indian or Mozambican authors who are featured in international catalogues, festivals and exhibitions, in fact, those who best engage with our cultural realities? Why do we limit ourselves to consuming only writers validated by foreign curators, when there is a vast array of other voices that could resonate with much more power among us?

The time of friendship

It wasn’t always like this. Between the 1950s and 1980s, a profoundly different cultural scene flourished. South-South cultural projects multiplied, anchored in something that today seems almost naïve, but which was profoundly revolutionary: friendship. Not as a private feeling, but as a political practice.

Relationships of coexistence, collaboration, and collective creation between artists, intellectuals, and managers from different countries in the Global South were the driving force behind projects that transcended national borders. Pan-Africanism and literary and artistic Pan-Americanism are direct phenomena of this drive. Cultural policies were born from these ties, not the other way around, and were formed organically and based on a continuous and consequential relationship.

On that same trip to Mexico, I had access to a remarkable – and almost forgotten – example of this spirit: the magazine The Feathered Horn, created in Mexico in 1962 by the poet Sergio Mondragón. I could not have discovered it except by chance: at a meeting at the home of a Mexican artist, I found myself enchanted by her library. The experience voyeur of every good reader when faced with a bookshelf full of books. Suddenly, I found myself fixated by a faded yellow spine, with the words: “Cuban Poetry Today“It was a copy of the magazine.

Seeing my interest, the artist generously gave me the copy as a gift. I was amazed at the object I was holding in my hands. Although it was published in 1968, a completely different cultural moment, with many more challenges for communication between countries, the magazine still had an impressive international network of local editors and contributors, spread throughout the Americas: Haroldo de Campos in Brazil, Nicanor Parra in Chile, Lawrence Ferlinghetti in the USA, among other names of the same level. Each country had a person responsible for the local curation, distribution and articulation of the magazine, creating a true horizontal, organic and vibrant cultural network.

The Feathered Horn It was not a unique phenomenon at that time: there were several internationalist initiatives, with writers and critics alternating between different publications. Another example of this is the notable project of the Casa de las Américas in Cuba. A cultural vitality that we have lost, especially since the shock of the neoliberal policies of the 1980s and 1990s, and that we need to rebuild. We have the instruments to do so, but it seems that there is still a certain timidity or even a lack of will.

BRICS Arts Association – a proposal under construction

But, as I said, we are in a unique moment, which allows for the resurgence of other possibilities for relationships between cultures. Above all, we need to try to understand and overcome the current void of cultural initiatives. Create the collective desire to build these bridges with our peers.

And this goes beyond the creation of bilateral projects, specific initiatives and financial funds and other forms of incentive for artistic production. It is necessary to establish forms of coexistence, of continuous exchange, of consequential relationships.

It is in this context that the BRICS Arts Association. More than an institutional space, it is a platform that seeks to revive this spirit of cultural friendship as a political practice. The aim is not only to create public notices or promote events, but to establish an ecosystem (or even a locussystem, formed by many places and many interconnected voices) of continuous and horizontal cultural circulation between the BRICS countries and the broader Global South.

Thus, it is not a question of replicating the structures we have inherited, but of imagining new ones. Of thinking about networks and bridges. Of reviving valuable initiatives that have been torn apart over time, of creating a common memory, of investing in local curation and peer-to-peer sharing. Of restoring to cultural policy its relational and affective dimension, at a more measured and continuous pace, which goes beyond the logic of productivism.

Already having partner institutions from nine BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Bolivia, United Arab Emirates and Cuba), the Association aims to create spaces for circulation between the countries, such as artistic residencies and BRICS Cultural Centers, as well as exhibitions, festivals, awards and publications of books and magazines. In this way, it seeks to promote an ongoing dialogue between these countries, valuing what is unique and what is common in their cultures.

Friendship, in this context, ceases to be a luxury or an adornment and becomes the foundation of a new cultural geopolitics. A radical gesture of reunion and reinvention, where culture is seen not only as an instrument of relations between people, but of social transformation, in the name of the constitution of a more just, free and beautiful world.

*Sergio Cohn is executive director of the BRICS Arts Association and editor of the collective A Ponte Invisível (www.brview.com).

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