Abaixa o Braço: Froiid

Froiid's "Abaixa o Braço" (Lower your arm) exhibition transforms football into social critique and a struggle for memory

Solo exhibition brings together paintings, photography, and installations that confront historical archives, authoritarianism, and Brazilian popular culture

At the intersection of archives, politics, and the symbolic realm, artist Froiid opens his solo exhibition "Abaixa o Braço" at Albuquerque Contemporânea in Belo Horizonte. With a critical text by Ana Roman, the exhibition mobilizes football as a language to dismantle hegemonic narratives—from the military dictatorship to World War II—through works that blend artificial intelligence, popular sayings, and constructive geometry.

The exhibition's title refers to Ataulfo ​​Alves' satirical song (1940), which ridiculed fascism during World War II. Froiid reframes the expression as an act of contemporary refusal: "lowering your arm" becomes a gesture of resistance to authoritarianism and state violence. In series such as "E agora" (And Now) (screenings that reactivate the forgotten memory of Brazilian soldiers during the war) and "O Peixe pela Boca" (AI photographs that expose the toxic performance of masculinity in sports), the artist operates as a "counter-archivist." His method—influenced by theorists such as Hal Foster and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay—destabilizes historical records to reveal gaps and silences.

KEY WORKS AND CONCEPTS
"Galinha Caolha Procura Perch Mais Cedo": Interactive installation with distorted button soccer fields, honoring Geraldo Décourt (considered the creator of button soccer leagues) linked to survival strategies.

"Abaixa o Braço" (Low Your Arm) is not about defeat, but about disobedience. I use soccer because it encapsulates Brazilian dramas: manufactured heroism, the erasure of Black and Indigenous histories, and the violence that surrounds our bodies. My works are makeshift solutions to the official archive — where the concrete becomes abstraction and the document becomes fiction."