Breaking tradition, the Rio Olympics this summer will feature 13 artist-designed posters instead of one.
“It’s really hard for us in Brazil to choose one artist to represent the Olympic Games, or represent the official posters,” Carla Camurati, director of culture for the Rio Olympics, which take place August 5-21, tells the Associated Press. “The important thing for us and the Olympic Games is to show Brazil as it is, with the colors, with the brightness, with the beauty of the mixture of people that we have here…”
Camurati explains to Paste magazine that “one artist couldn’t accurately represent the more than 200 million walks of life that call the South American host country home.” Therefore, 13 artists were carefully selected and given the opportunity to capture Brazilian culture in the spirit of the games.
The list of artists includes: Alexandre Mancini, Antônio Dias, Beatriz Milhazes, Claudio Tozzi, Ana Clara Schindler, Gringo Cardia, Gustavo Greco, Gustavo Piqueria, Guto Lacaz, Juarez Machado, Kobra, Rico Lins, and one non-Brazilian artist, Olga de Amaral.
Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, who is represented by Galerie Agnès Monplaisir, is known for experimenting with textile designs, and most of her work contains a healthy dose of gold. Her poster for Rio 2016, “Umbra A- Rio,” gives the games a glittery new look.
The 13 posters, previously on view at the Santiago Calatrava-designed Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow), are now displayed at Deodoro Olympic Park and will remain there throughout the games. Afterward, they will be distributed to local schools.
For many of the artists, this isn’t the first time they’ve been included in a popular exhibition, but it is a huge deal to create a poster that over 500,000 people may see.
Check out the rest of the posters for the 2016 Rio Olympics below.
