Visual Arts

The Graduate Program in Visual Arts generates studies in the field of arts with the aim of coordinating and fostering critical and theoretical reflection as well as research and practice within contemporary artistic production. Its goal is to provide new possibilities of addressing this area of ​​complex and relational kinds of knowledge.

Benefitting from the facilities of one of the best universities in Latin America, it proposes to qualify the various professionals in the fields of art to perform critically and comprehensively, considering artistic practice and theoretical production as integrated activities.  In this sense, the program aims to investigate in its two lines of research – “Visual Poetics and Creation Processes” (PVPC) and “History, Theory and Criticism” (HTC) – the processes of creation in visual arts, considering their conceptual frameworks and transitive and dialogical relations.

The program emphasizes the need for balance between practice and theory, taking into consideration that all processes of materialization of the contemporary artistic image are imbued with conceptual relations, with senses of belonging that are built by practice and reflection on such practice. Therefore, the program requires artists doing research in “Visual Poetics and Creation Processes” (PVPC) to write an essay linking the concepts involved in artistic practice, while those doing research in “History, Theory and Criticism” (HTC) must present a critical reflection that addresses the materiality and historicity of their research subject.

Since its introduction in 2010, the program has awarded several master’s degrees and doctorates in Visual Arts to professionals currently working in many different areas, and aims to continually improve its academic and institutional possibilities, providing constant exchange with researchers from other national and international centers.

Since 2018, the Graduate Program in Visual Arts has been part of Unicamp’s Institutional Project for the Internationalization of Graduate Studies through the CAPES/PRINT Program.

 

UNIFIED AREA AND LINES OF RESEARCH

The line of research in Visual Poetics and Creation Processes (PVPC) comprises the conceptual and methodological investigation of practice in fields related to the various visual arts manifestations in their two-dimensional, three-dimensional and performative poetics, also covering architecture and design in their transdisciplinary relationships with the visual arts area, works produced from technologies and media, whether analog or digital, including multimedia and networked experiences. Its goal is to develop research and reflection on forms of production based on the relationships between procedures, languages, materials and concepts, aiming to contribute to the practice, analysis and construction of knowledge of artistic work, to its discursive practices in their contemporary manifestations. It addresses the study of visuality and its expressive possibilities, its processes and projects in different media and technologies in the visual arts.


The History, Theory and Criticism (HTC) line of research comprises several theoretical, critical and historical approaches to the production of visual arts, including the field of visual studies, art criticism, historical discourse, issues of theories of art and issues related to artistic and cultural heritage. It goal is to reflect on art, aesthetic perception, the construction of critical and historiographic discourses, as well as on the process of legitimation and institutionalization of artistic practice and its epistemological systematics. It also addresses the hybridization of the expressive fields and the consequences offered by new technologies from the perspective of history of art, theory of art and image.