Last month, a right-wing Brazilian lawmaker filed a complaint with the Ministério Público do Estado de São Paulo (MPSP), the state public prosecutor’s office, against the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Masp) over its exhibition La Chola Poblete: Pop Andino, alleging “religious offense”.
The complaint coincided with a petition posted on Change.org, titled “Respect for Faith and Citizenship”, which called on the museum to reconsider the show or to include warnings to contextualise the works “in a sensitive and respectful manner”. The petition, which opens with the phrase “We, Christian citizens”, initially sought to gather 10,000 signatures and has since surpassed 12,000. The MPSP, however, recently dismissed the complaint.
The Argentine artist’s first solo presentation in Brazil features 31 works and is curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Masp’s artistic director, and the assistant curator Leandro Muniz. It includes 14 watercolours from the ongoing series Vírgenes cholas, which was shown at the 2024 Venice Biennale (also curated by Pedrosa). There, Poblete received a special mention for a body of work that, according to the jury, approaches “Western religious iconography and Indigenous spiritual practices with a trans and queer flair”.
The complaint was filed on 24 May by Danilo Balas, a state representative from the former president Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party. In a press release, Balas said he had asked prosecutors to investigate possible violations of religious freedom. He also alleged offenses against Christian and Mormon symbols, and the possible use of public funds or cultural incentives in works he considered offensive to religious faith.
“Freedom of expression cannot serve as a justification for attacks on faith, disrespect for religious symbols or affronts to the population’s spiritual values,” Balas said in the statement.
La Chola Poblete Photo: Tomas Wurschmidt, © La Chola Poblete
In response to an inquiry from The Art Newspaper, a spokesperson for the MPSP said the complaint was based on “abstract conjecture” and that there was no ground to open a civil investigation. The decision, signed on 3 June, also stated that the MPSP’s role is not to replace the technical, curatorial, cultural or artistic judgment of the institutions responsible for conceiving, selecting or presenting exhibitions.
The museum said it had been informed of the dismissal and stood by the exhibition. “Masp deeply respects freedom of artistic expression and religious freedom as fundamental rights that coexist and respect one another,” a museum spokesperson said in a statement to The Art Newspaper. “Throughout history, art engages with the symbols and values of its time—including religious ones—not as an offense, but as a living reflection of culture and human thought. We believe that the museum is a living, open space for mutual respect.” The exhibition remains on view until 2 August.
Poblete was born in Guaymallén, Argentina, in 1989. She began using the name “Chola” as an alter ego in her performances and later as part of her identity. The term chola, historically used as a racial slur against women of Indigenous descent in Andean countries, is reclaimed in her work as a political and affective gesture.
The artist draws on her own biography as chola, brown, queer and non-binary to open a broader discussion about colonial history and the ways certain bodies have been exoticised, stigmatised or excluded from the canon. In Vírgenes cholas, she combines Andean and Catholic deities with references to music, fashion, protest slogans, autobiographical details and mass culture.
At the 2024 Venice Biennale, the jury noted that her practice “resists the exoticisation of Indigenous women, insists on the power of sexuality and draws on ancestral knowledge from South America”. The artist did not respond to a request for comment.
