Arto Lindsay

Pop musician, indefatigable producer and musical provocateur Arto Lindsay is a multifaceted artist that crosses not only geographical but musical boundaries. Born in the United States, he spent most of his youth in Brazil, where he came of age during the Tropicália movement, a period of experimentation and exchange between languages and artistic influences. Upon returning to the United States, in New York, Arto Lindsay began to show promise as a writer, but his interest quickly shifted towards the musical and artistic scenes. He was a key figure in the Manhattan musical scene of the 80’s, playing with bands such as the Lounge Lizards and the Golden Palominos. He has worked for more than four decades on the intersection between art and music. As a member of the band DNA, he contributed to the creation of the No Wave movement, an artistic movement which spanned music, films, performances, videos and contemporary art. Later, while part of the band Ambitious Lovers, Lindsay developed an intensely subversive brand of pop music, a hybrid between the American and the Brazilian style. During his career he has collaborated with several visual and musical artists, such as Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Animal Collective, Matthew Barney, Caetano Veloso and Rirkrit Tiravanija. For many years he was involved with the Brazilian Carnaval and, in 2004, idealized a series of performative public parades. He often works as a musical curator for several galleries and famed institutions such as the Barbican Centre, the Carlton Arts Festival or the Tonic club in New York. In the 2013 edition of LEFFEST, Arto Lindsay presented New York Beat Movie Downtown 81, by Edo Bertoglio, followed by a conversation with the public about his work. One of the distinguishing features of the artist’s work is in the way in which he creates a proximity between great contrasts. Moved by the impulses of Tropicália, punk and avant-garde, Lindsay showcases a great variety of styles, making it impossible to consider him faithful to only  one of them. For the Village Voice “Lindsay is unmatched. He is a sensitive composer, with dissonant creations that make him the perfect match for a hyper-Brazilian-post-bossa-nova.”