Parangolés: Hélio Oiticica\'s Borderless Spaces

The dominant narratives of art history are often told from a Eurocentric and North American stand-point, and usually involves the traditional form of passive viewership. The shift to the beginnings of postmodernism can be signified by the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica’s performative series Parangolés. Parangolés rejects the conventions of the western art world by transforming the spectator into a participant whose movement activates the art experience. This paper argues that Oiticica’s version of “anti-art” eradicates a number of boundaries, such as class, geographical, and those imposed by the mainstream art world, by containing within itself the ability to exist in any given environment, regardless of people or place.