Gender is Still the Battleground

Youth groups and their artistic interventions are changing the character of the public in São Paulo. ¹ In the 2010s, it is through cultural production, not through political movements, that public spaces are being transformed. A significant proportion of the new cultural producers come from the impoverished peripheries of the city. Through cultural production, they not only affirm their existence in the city and assert their right to use its spaces, but also start to master the production of signs — painting, calligraphy, writing, video, film, and several forms of electronic and digital production. Moreover, they use them aggressively to expose the discrimination they experience and to re-signify spaces of the city, especially the periphery. No longer represented by others who used to dominate the production of signs, young people from the peripheries now force their own representations onto the city. Thus, they destabilize the previous system of signs, social relations, and rules for the use of public space dominated by the upper classes.