Art groups
April 05, 2025
hierarchy of art groups, often dominated by traditional institutions such as museums, galleries and curators, creates barriers that limit many artists’ access to the established art scene. These spaces favor already established names or works that align with pre-established commercial and aesthetic trends, marginalizing productions that deviate from the conventional. As a result, emerging artists, artists from the periphery or artists who challenge hegemonic norms face difficulties in gaining visibility, perpetuating an exclusionary structure.
In addition, social relations in the art world often function as an informal selection mechanism, where personal connections and influence are valued more than artistic merit. The lack of diversity in decision-making spaces reinforces stereotypes and limits opportunities for creators outside the dominant axis. As long as the system values cultural and social capital more than innovation and plurality, art will continue to reproduce inequalities, instead of being a truly democratic and transformative field.
Traditional art museums and institutions often enclosure culture, privileging elites and reinforcing exclusionary positions, initiatives like teiaDAO represent a decentralized alternative where collective governance can challenge these monopolies. While the conventional art system relies on curators, galleries, and concentrated cultural capital, teiaDAO operates on the Tezos blockchain using multisigs (multi-firm wallets), ensuring that decisions about curation, funding, and artistic direction are made democratically and transparently. This structure not only **shifts power from the few to the many**, but also opens up space for artists marginalized by the traditional circuit, transforming the very idea of who defines what constitutes valid art. Thus, while insular institutions perpetuate exclusion, cultural DAOs demonstrate that art can, in fact, be everyone’s territory.
geophilosophy of art challenges us to question the hegemonic centers that proclaim themselves guardians of "global art" , such as the great European capitals, where curators, galleries and institutions often dictate what is legitimized as valid culture. These agents, often under the discourse of universality, reproduce a Westernized canon, excluding peripheral voices and reinforcing colonial hierarchies. It is necessary to deconstruct this geography of artistic power, recognizing that art is not born only in Paris, Berlin or Venice, but also in the favelas, in the backlands and in indigenous communities , places where creation flows outside the elitist circuits. In this sense, projects such as teiaDAO and other decentralized initiatives show that true global art is not that which obeys a dominant geopolitical axis, but rather that which is constructed in horizontal networks, where multiple epistemologies coexist. While the “bad actors” of institutional art continue to monopolize narratives, resistance lies in strengthening alternative ecosystems that not only question but rewrite the rules of the game. Geophilosophy, then, must be a battlefield: a fight against the centralization of meaning and in favor of a world in which art is, in fact, pluriversal.
Shima + GE Grupo Empreza @MAR Museu de Arte do Rio, 2872 x 4308 pixels, JPEG Archive, Photo Thiago Lemos, 2014