Environmental Art
Jorge Menna Barreto, Ph.D. (b. 1970, Araçatuba, Brazil) is an artist and educator whose practice and research has been dedicated to site-specific art for over 20 years. Menna Barreto approaches site-specificity from a critical and South American perspective, having taught, lectured, and written on the subject; he has participated in art residencies, projects and exhibitions worldwide. In 2016, he took part in the 32nd São Paulo Biennial with his award-winning project Restauro: a restaurant set up to work with a complex system of environmental restoration in collaboration with settlements of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST); the project travelled to the Serpentine Galleries, London, in 2017. In 2020, as a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Netherlands, he launched a periodical called Enzyme in collaboration with artist Joélson Buggilla. In Geneva, Switzerland, he has collaborated on the MFA in Socially Engaged Art at HEAD - Haute École d’Arts Appliqués, where he is working on a research project focused on ecopedagogy. Menna Barreto is presently working on a new project with the MST in Brazil called Voicescapes for the Landless.