The Hélio Oiticica Municipal Art Center has reopened after some renovations. The reopening event took place on November 5^th, 2021, during the Brazilian National Culture Day, featuring unpublished works by Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980), including two installations (“Penetráveis”) created by the artist, but never before open to the audience.

The reopening and exhibition of his artworks are the result of a partnership between the Municipal Secretariat of Culture of Rio de Janeiro and the Hélio Oiticica Project, the institute responsible for preserving and promoting the collection, stored in the house Hélio Oiticica used to live, in Jardim Botânico.

The two never-before-seen penetrables will be displayed in the surrounding area of the art center (Rua Imperatriz Leopoldinense and Praça Tiradentes). Both will be open to artistic interventions from the most diverse areas, ranging from graffiti to dance performance.

HO Art Center’s artistic director, Cesar Oiticica Filho, who is also Hélio Oiticica Project’s general coordinator, announced that as of 2022, the auditorium will feature courses, meetings and debates on art in Rio. As well as temporary exhibitions by artists that relate to Oiticica’s work, through temporary curatorship.

It is a three-story building with six exhibition rooms, two mezzanines, two multipurpose rooms, a reading room, a 100-seat auditorium and a café/restaurant.

Rua Luís de Camões, 68, Centro. Mon. through Sat., from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free entry.

After 12 years the Projeto Helio Oiticica is back to the Helio Oiticica Cultural Center , in the center of Rio.
The work of Oiticica will be exhibited again in a new way, that the artistic director Cesar Oiticica Filho is calling a program.

For the opening on Nov 5th, the idea is to present its program, that put the focus on construction of unprecedented Penetrables, out side the building. In direct dialog with the city.

Inside the Center the public will have the origins of this category invented in 1960 by the artist, that has initiated the direct participation on works of art. The PN1 and Hunting Dogs Project will be the opening gallery, pointing that since from the beginning the idea of these works, more than just participatory, are about the relation of the body with the architecture and the urban space.

A huge amount of documents shows the concept of music through the idea of sheet music. As oiticica states in an interview: “ Music is what I do”. The creative process will be clear in the galleries as the concept of “Delirium Ambulatory” the practice of walking through the city discover ing things or places that would become works of art.

The Helio Oiticica Program will work with some of the most important universities in the state, as UFRJ, UERJ,UFF and Uni Rio, in a transversatility concept, as these works needs several knowledges, as, visual arts, architecture, design, engineering, agriculture, innovation, production design, cinema, and more.

The main idea is to have courses, workshops, performances, shows, collaborative work, inside the H.O. Center and inside the works as well. Most of big Penetrables suggest different kinds of participation from distinct artists .

PN10 will be the first outside construction of the Program and will be followed ones, PN 11, 12 and 13. They were projected to work together, during his Guggenheim fellowship he wanted to put them at Central Park and baptized as “ Subterranean Tropicalia Projects”.

The final goal of the Helio Oiticica Program is to built the works sustainable, they will be able to dismount and travel without generating any waist, spreading the range for new audiences in the country and abroad.