ALEXANDRE ALVES Isabelle Acrylic on canvas 150 x 180 cm 2019
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EDITORIAL We are celebrating 10 years of O Menelick2Ato! As bearers of the legacy of black press in Brazil, resistance and affirmation constitute the foundation of our work, seeking to amplify voices and to draw attention to critical perspectives about black experiences in the diaspora. Diaspora is a movement. In the 21st edition, we present an issue mobilized by the idea of EMERGENCY: What is urgent or critical, as well as what rises, ascends and blooms. In a world that thrives on inequalities, despair and destruction, knowledge can inspire not only hope, but the confidence to move forward together. Nabor Junior and Luciane Ramos Silva Co-Editors
(This is an abridged version of the 21st issue in Portuguese, including selected articles, statistics and works of art. For the full version, check the 21st edition of O Menelick 2Ato Brazilian version print - or omenelick2ato.com)
ABOUT O MENELICK 2ATO In 2007, the digital magazine O Menelick 2Ato was created by a group of black journalists, artists and academics from the city of São Paulo, Brazil. O Menelick 2Ato is an independent editorial project that aims to contextualize, value and reflect on the history and the roots of the Afro-Brazilian cultural identity and its connections to the black diaspora in the Americas, focusing on the visual arts. A print edition began to circulate in 2010, and it is distributed for free throughout the city of São Paulo. O Menelick 2Ato makes Afro-Brazilian culture visible in a racially unequal society. Although more than 50% of the Brazilian population self-identify as blacks, Afro-Brazilians have almost no presence nor voice in mainstream Brazilian media. The magazine gives artists, thinkers and protagonists of Afro-Brazilian artistic production a space to share their perspectives and project their ideas, creativity and concerns on the twenty-first century black community in Brazil. Since 2010, the magazine has published twenty-one printed editions. O Menelick 2Ato believes that art is a powerful way to make the struggles and contributions of black people be seen and disseminated.
ABOUT THIS EDITION The English edition of the 21st issue of O Menelick 2Ato is inserted as part of the O Menelick 2Ato: Art, Culture and Society From the Perspective of Contemporary Brazilian Black Press series, an exciting series of events taking place at the University of Michigan in February 2020, including the opening of the digital and print exhibit “O Menelick 2Ato. Making Black Press in 21st Century Brazil” featuring selected magazine’s covers by Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Diasporic artists at the University of Michigan Hatcher Graduate Library. We thank U of M co-sponsors that made possible this project: Romance Languages and Literatures Department, UM Hatcher Graduate Library, UM Library Mini Grant, Women’s Studies, Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG), Language Resource Center (LRC), Department of History, African Studies Center, Center for Latin-American and Caribbean Studies – Brazil Initiative, Department of Communication and Media, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies.
LINOCA SOUZA
Estudos para novos sĂmbolos nacionais (Studies for new national symbols) Digital illustration 40 x 30 cm 2018/19
NO MARTINS
Reciclar é necessário, URGENTE! (Recycling is necessary, URGENT!) Acrylic on canvas 150 x 200 cm 2017
O MENELICK 2º ATO MAGAZINE IS A MANDELACREW COMUNICAÇÃO E FOTOGRAFIA PUBLISHING. CNPJ: 27.612.347/0001-41. ADDRESS: RUA ROMA, 80 – SALA 144 - SÃO CAETANO DO SUL/SP – CEP: 09571-220. TEL (11) 9 9651 81 99. ISSN 2317-4706. DIRECTOR NABOR JR. CO-DIRECTOR LUCIANE RAMOS-SILVA. DIAGRAMMING NINA VIEIRA I ZALIKA.COM.BR EDITORIAL SUPPORT FOR THE ENGLISH VERSION MARISOL FILA – PHD CANDIDATE IN ROMANCE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES - UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN GRAPHIC PROJECT AND ART DIRECTION NABOR JR. AND NINA VIEIRA FREE DISTRIBUTION IN CULTURAL CENTERS, GATHERINGS, LIBRARIES, ART GALERIES, MUSEUMS, SHOWS, FAIRS, FESTIVALS, CONCERT HOUSES, STORES, THEATERS, PUBS AND CONFLICT AREAS. CONTACT revista@omenelick2ato.com I omenelick2ato.com ANO X – EDIÇÃO ZER0XXI facebook.com/omenelick2ato
SIDNEY AMARAL
O Curupira (Nostalgia series) Watercolor and pencil on paper 55 x 75 cm
instagram.com/omenelick2ato
quilombo WRITING ADRIANA OLIVEIRA FRIEDA EKOTTO LUCIANE RAMOS-SILVA NABOR JR TATIANA NASCIMENTO
ART ALINE MOTTA JOY GREGORY LINOCA SOUZA NO MARTINS RENATA FELINTO SIDNEY AMARAL (IN MEMORIAN)
summary 12
CULTURAL CRITICISM IN THE BLACK BRAZILIAN PRESS BLAZING:
SÃO PAULO AND RIO DE JANEIRO
17 TAKE THE WHITE GUILT TO YOUR SHRINK 22 READING FRANTZ FANON IN THE BLACK LIVES MATTER ERA 30 GRADA KILOMBA: REVERSED ROUTES FOR POSSIBLE PATHS 36 BLACK CURATION IN THE VISUAL ARTS - PATHS OF AFFIRMATION
Quilombo journal. Rio de Janeiro, 1943.
A Voz da Raça journal. São Paulo, 1933.
Mundo Novo journal. São Paulo, 1950.
Senzala magazine. São Paulo, 1946.
O Menelick journal. São Paulo, 1915.
O Clarim d´Alvorada journal. São Paulo, 1930.
C U LT U R A L C R I T I C I S M I N T H E BLACK BRAZILIAN PRESS BLAZING: S Ã O PA U L O A N D R I O D E J A N E I R O by Nabor Jr photo Unknown author
Since its birth, in São Paulo, the newspaper A Pátria (1889), considered the founding landmark of “dark skinned men” acting – as the Africans, their descendants, free and released black people were called at that time in Brazil – by its own press, in a journalistic editorial which later would receive the name of Paulista Black Press, until today, the world has changed. In fact, the world is another – despite the survival of handful similarities, many of them sad ones, which still connects us to past centuries. And among many changes that happened in the most varied aspects of the human life in the last 140 years, achievements that provided us the access to tools that made us capable of developing more fluently critical reflections through writing, aboy the black existence in the society we live is among the most salutary.
PARALLELS AND CONVERGENCES Studies indicate that the newspaper A Pátria (1889) inaugurates the secular history of the São Paulo black press. Sympathetic to republicanism, especially because it stimulated an atmosphere of hope among freed and free blacks from São Paulo, just as the recently signed abolition had done, this periodical was continued by the newspaper O Progresso (1899).
Seen, among other aspects, for being closely related to access to education and, consequently, the change in the social status of this population.
Just over 10 years from abolition and already experiencing the early days of the Republic, the newspaper O Progresso (1899) - already disillusioned with the practical results of abolition and the republican regime itself - unlikely the political inclination of its predecessor, claimed to have the sole objective of “providing selfless assistance to the race to which we belong”.
In practical terms, however, how have these transformations that forged the birth of writers, poets, musicians, painters, stylists, photographers, among other professionals in the field of the arts, been accompanied by the black press? Specially the black press in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro? Which contribution was given to the critical reflection of the cultural and artistic production of fundamental works for the construction of Brazilian arts of black authorship?
These combat, denunciation and integration newspapers, which dealt with cultural criticism in its broadest sense - which relates cultural criticism to both culture and society - paved the way for a series of periodicals to appear in São Paulo in the following decades, most of them, created within cultural associations and recreational associations of the black community of São Paulo. 13
This movement, which is still urgent and necessary nowadays, would cut the last 140 years with publications such as: O Menelick (1915), A Rua (1916), O Xauter (1916), O Alfinete (1918), O Bandeirante (1919), A Liberdade (1919), A Sentinela (1920), O Kosmos (1922) and Getulino (1923), Alvorada (1935), Senzala (1946), União (1948), Mundo Novo (1950), Quilombo (1950), Redenção (1950), A Voz da Negritude (1953), O Novo Horizonte (1954), Notícias de Ébano (1957), O Mutirão (1958), Hífen (1960), Niger (1960), Nosso Jornal (1961), Correio d´Ébano (1963), Árvore das Palavras (1974), O Quadro (1974), Biluga (1974), Jornegro (1977), O Saci (1978), Abertura (1978), Vissungo (1979), Derebo (1980), Chama Negra (1986), Revista Ébano (1980), Tribuna Afro Brasileira (1989), Pode Cre (1993), Agito Geral (1995), Raça Brasil (1996), Visual Cabelos Crespos (1997), Negro Cem por Cento (1998), Rap Brasil (1999), Planeta Hip Hop (2000), Eparrei (2001), Afirmativa Plural (2004), Elementos (2007), among others. And, in the field of internet and social networks, initiatives such as Geledés, CEERT (Centro de Estudos das Relações de Trabalho e Desigualdade), Africas Portal, Black bloggers, Blog do Negro Belchior, Alma Preta and, evidently, O Menelick 2º Ato magazine itself. In common, these digital vehicles of the 21st century seek to constitute themselves as a space for the production of thoughts in which black people are treated with dignity and that, quantitatively, mirror their hegemonic presence in the Brazilian society. Thus, when drawing a parallel between the production of information through newspapers and magazines produced in the first half of the 20th century - the most pungent period of São Paulo black press - with current initiatives, we observe that, inserted in the context of “mass culture”, the cultural criticism in the black press (as a result of a phenomenon that also affects the press in general) still has a shy social impact, showing only a fragmented remnant of the debate that it could lead. Specially seen the quantity and quality of black cultural production in
the fields of music, literature, theater, cinema, fine arts, photography, gastronomy, fashion and television. It is worth mentioning that the criticism, in the beginning, was conceived as a space dedicated to cultural debate, since it acts as a way of legitimizing speech subjects, of concepts related to public opinion and, finally, of cultural practices rooted in the socioeconomic history of each era.
THE JORNAL QUILOMBO, IN RIO DE JANEIRO The state that provided most of the publications from the black press throughout the 20th century, São Paulo, did not even have a publication like the Quilombo newspaper, founded by Abdias do Nascimento in 1948, as an arm of the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN), which brought together in the same space black and white intellectuals who sought, based on their reflections, to contribute for the construction of a more democratic, just society that in fact included black people and their problems in the country’s agenda. Among its collaborators, among others, were names such as: Guerreiro Ramos, Ironilde Rodrigues, Edison Carneiro, Solano Trindade, Nelson Rodrigues, Rachel de Queiroz, Gilberto Freyre, Arthur Ramos, Murilo Mendes, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Péricles Leal, Orígines Lessa and Roger Bastide. Not to mention foreign intellectuals who collaborated with the publication, such as George Schuyler (journalist from Pittsburgh Courier), the Argentinean Efrain Tomás Bó,
Estanislau Fischlowitz, Paul Vanorden Shaw and Ralph Bunche. Keeping in tune with what was produced in Paris, New York or Chicago; Quilombo translated and made known the text Orpheu Negro, by Jean-Paul Sartre, interviewed Albert Camus, reproduced articles from The Crisis, a newspaper directed by Du Bois in New York; maintained regular contact with the staff of the Présence Africaine, an organ of French blackness, as well as with the main North American black newspapers. It discussed music, cinema, theater and poetry made in Brazil by blacks, as well as the manifestations of the so-called “Afro-Brazilian culture”, such as candomblés.
initiatives that, whether through columnists or writing texts, stimulate critical debate beyond good and bad, like and dislike. The past and the present of the black press show that it is possible to convey such content capable of crossing borders in a broad perspective of modern black society. The media can and should be a space for empowerment and reflection so that we can have a society capable of facing daily challenges.
Full article available on portuguese in 21th Edition of OMenelick2Ato brasilian version.
In tune with the Brazilian and international cultural world, like the most important American or French publications of the time, Quilombo was similar and, at the same time, quite different from his predecessors (and many of his successors) of the black press. Since, in addition to fulfilling its traditional functions, such as denunciation, the fight for rights, alternatives for black insertion in society, this publication also illuminated and gave voice to Brazilian black scholarship - “black” not only in color, but, mainly in identity.
TODAY The reflection on deceitful themes related to black cultural production in Brazil and which still do not find a field for discussion by the hegemonic media today is urgent. Having seen the examples presented throughout this text and the conformation of Brazilian black society, increasingly educated and aware of its history of intellectual competence, we can see how important it is to stimulate and value journalistic
NABOR JR. is the founder and co-director of the magazine O Menelick 2º Ato. Nabor Jr is a journalist specialized in cultural journalism. He also works as a photographer under the pseudonym of MANDELACREW.
15
VIOLENCE AGAINST
TRANSGENDER PEOPLE AND TRANSSEXUALS
IN BRAZIL
With 47% of the total of reported deaths, Brazil leads the world ranking of transgender people and Transsexual murders. According to Transgender Europe, which monitors the murders of transgender people and transexual around the world, between October 2017 and September 2018, 167 Trans people were
murdered in Brazil
take the white guilt to your shrink by tatiana nascimento (translated by the author and larissa bontempi)
kinetic paralysis therapy seems to be a great place to learn how to deal with guilt. the appropriate place to talk exhaustively about it, disclose forgotten memories, revisit them, propose alternatives or to just ruminate the whole thing for as long as it takes before letting it go. but maybe in the case of white guilt, taking it to a therapeutic environment brings on – besides a positive, healing and transforming way of dealing with guilt –, an manumission to black people who, as me, cohabit with white people and neither want nor need to be compelled to deal with this guilt, not ours. I don’t see white guilt as some guilt felt by some white person: it’s more precisely the feeling of being guilty for their own whiteness which has been discussed by many white progressive people here in Brasil. I’ve seen this haunting feeling as an attempt to purge the sin of racism from their own white life. sometimes, it seems to be a secondary manifestation derivative of the initial perception of whiteness as, at the same time, the maintainer and biggest beneficiary of racism. a manifestation that takes the next step towards white critical self-understanding about the place where they stand in a colonial society. but such step, being guilt, is stationary. few things can be as paralyzing as guilt. in the case of white guilt, I tend to notice it as even more conveniently paralyzing, for (apparent contradiction, but just apparent) set in motion a specific form of racial irresponsibility. this guilt, especially when felt by white activists is a very characteristic one, which first activates the paralyzing device that works to create the inability to act or stand in an active/reflective and transforming way (or “reparations”, as it’s been pointed out) regarding racism. it seems to freeze the white person in two frames: first, the one of
purge / expiation – as if who feels guilty for being white expressed through this guilt their desire for liberation; a deliverance from their own racism. “I’m not that racist, I know racism is so bizarre that I feel guilty for being white, it’s not like I was proud, you know? This must worth something, right?”. the second frame in which white guilt defines paralyzation is in the place of martyr that it seems to put the white person into. here, even if the person says s/he doesn’t feel guilty for being white, there’s some honor in feeling this particular guilt (“mea, mea, maxima”), a certain lushness, an expectation of acknowledgment of the pain that comes from feeling guilty for being a white person – I know, it sounds like an overstatement, but I’ve seen it recursively, to the point of being able to trace this reflection out –, leading the person to a kind of protagonism, or desire of a white protagonism, in their anti-racist general plan (which could also appear in quotation marks). guilt is frequently used as one of those cards that give a lot of power in a round of Uno, a sort of green card that makes, for instance, white people feel comfortable to express how they feel sad, guilty, terrible, not-knowing-what-to-do when they’re at a meeting with black people, or in public events about black culture or with black protagonism, and even when they’re in a conversation with a single black person. they seem to forget, them white people
who make this kind of mourning at their own painderiving-from-the-guilt-for-being-white, that the focus of our liberation as black people is not them. not only they wanna forget that, but they insist on track, by the performance of guilt – which must always be spread in public, unraveled in experimental details and offered in a form of spectacle that conjures facial expressions with specific gesture and tones of voice that many times verge on crying, when not opening into that –, the path of their protagonism in what they consider as the antiracist struggle. white suffering, black exhaustion the very naturalness with which they expect us black people to always be willing to hear their wailing & sadness & regrets & memories-of-when-they-wereracist-children-with-their-maids is quite an evident clue of how they (or some of them) seem to consider guilt as a feeling that lets them, besides apt to, in need of getting all the attention, and makes them activate an expectation of palliative care: they want us to be ready to embrace them, take care of them, hear them, give them redemptive opinions, help them in the process of understanding “what when how where there was racism”, finally: offer them affective relief for the cathartic moment of sentimental leakage, political subsidy for their moral development and/or activist status, and, obviously, forgiveness for their white guilt. I’ve already commented a lot on how perverse is this mechanism of apologizing for being/having been racist, for this request intend to be able of inverting the charge of responsibility for racism by almost taking it away from the white person and throwing it at the black person in an almost liturgical plan, in which not only the black person becomes responsible for redeeming white people for their guilt (which would be the expected aftermath of effectively forgiving them),
and, if not doing it, be condemned, the black person!, to being seen as heartless, bad person, incomprehensible, inhuman, in short, these or any other vile adjectives that will, as a plague in Egypt, bear down on the one (black) who is not willing to forgive (the white “sinner”). I’ve also analyzed how the idea that racism is forgivable works perversely by suggesting that racism is relationally resolved, from a mimetic well-crystallized request to the super familiar movement of a grown-up making two children hug each other and say “I’m sorry / apology accepted”, treated on a prosaic level, frivolously, – as if it didn’t contain, instead, a social, cultural, economical, historical, political, structural solidity, based yet at the moral idearium of catholicism (more than christianism itself, for hegemonic churches and religions work a lot to sell the image of the crucified Jesus as more relevant than any other). the very same morale that articulates guilty, self-pity, martyrdom (the most public, the batter), redemption/forgiveness, salvation as fundamental to the heterocissexist mononuclear binary family ground of coloniality. furthermore, that first mentioned paralyzing device has a double paradox: although the guilt is deeply paralyzing for white people (it practically creates a red carpet on which they stop to sparkle under the imaginary flashes of my metaphors), it demands deep movementation from black people. political position. gut discomfort. rolled eyes in the skeletal orbits of the skull. relational re-evaluations. this kinetic reflexiveness can produce a series of acts made by black people, swallowed in a white tide of expiation of the racist guilt, demanding either the help desired by the white person (having lived among many of them, including friends or close people, I put myself countless times in the same place where I was simultaneously put into), or the physical or mental evasion from the rosary of racist memories that the white person starts to pray. as I’ve seen myself in all these situations, it seems to me that leaving physically is the easiest, although not being the most advisable or possible. for instance, in contexts where I am teaching about racism and/is white privilege, people practically expect me to be willing to listen to their horror racial stories shaded – but
never neutralized, different from what they seem to think –, by white guilt, and even if I interrupt them, or some of them, there’s always anyone thinking my story is the most important / dramatic, and announcing it without even warning that the story might emotionally trigger, for example, black people, as me. leaving mentally is usually more demanding, for it needs the capacity of activating a selective unhearing, almost a kind of self-distraction-button – but paying inattention (thanks, nina ferreira, for the disconcept) is one of the most difficult things in life to me. indeed, I find it impressive how some white people seem to have a feverish necessity to narrate in detail racist facts, occurrences, memories of events witnessed or promoted by them, to finally say how traumatic / memorable that was to them; how they feel guilty and ashamed of having done that, but only after so many years they have recognized how perversely racist that was. and almost always, as a corollary of those episodes, they highlight the importance of realizing all that to differentiate them, make them engaged in the anti-racist struggle, make them feel their deep discomforts or simply to activate their so called white guilt. “sense & sensibility” therefore, I realize how, in the first place, guilt functions as a rate of white self-worship: by saying “I’m sorry”, “I feel guilty”, white people seem more preoccupied with their (un)conscius desire of being the center of attention than with the suffering of the person to whom s/he claims to be sympathetic. & yes, whiteness IS the core of racism, but not like that. actually, these emotions try to shield white people, creating calls for hearing, care, consolation to their weep, their so alleged vulnerability, which is nothing else but victimization. as with claims of “white fragility”, “white sensibility”, old ways of rebutting accusations of racism. I find it quite a bit delusional the belief that the end of racism will carry out with this fever of “new” concepts which “spans everything”. call it guilt, fragility, sensibility, whiteness brazen, but everything comes from the same source: racism. and within it, any of these evasive emotions is a white
tactic of second-degree irresponsibility: white people free themself from racism at the same time in which they weighs us down with racism again. because, and to me this is the core of these exemptions, if the white person is the one who’s fragilized by the accusation of racism (committed by his/herself !), it is implied that the black person is assaulting them by bringing it up; if white guilt drives white people into a deep grief, to overwhelming levels of psychic suffering, it is implied that being forgiven by any black person will save them – from themselves. effectively, such assumptions re-update colonial stereotyped roles that created and maintain as complementary opposites the whiteness, by one side, meaning sensibility/reason/civility/fragility, and on the other side, blackness as bestiality/irrationality/ savagery/aggressiveness. the atrocious racists victimize themselves by claiming that they cannot deal with the accusation of racism (because they are depressed, unemployed, LGBTQIA+, poor, or any other social stigmatized marks, and even any). they also use to say that the accusation might be fair, but it was made too keenly. & again the myth of animosity, violence, anger as black attributes – unbearable to the fragile white psyche. while, in fact, is racism what is unbearable. and also, the very notion of fragility, when activated in feminist and/ or women related contexts, is paradoxically playing with colonialist concepts of white femininity, dependent on physical, sexual, mental exploitation of the bodies of black people seen/treated/binarized as women by being defined as non-fragile, that is, not feminine: and, therefore, apt to brutal colonial exploitation. in a second degree, I’ve also commented, in several occasions, on the functional sadism within racism that created the taste for disgrace in colonialism, especially for black disgrace. this sadism is updated every time stories about black suffering that activate and illustrate the white guilt are plastically retold, for the narratives focus on the expiation of guilt (as it actually seems to do, contrary 19
to what the discourses defend) and actually have no concern at all for others, nor trace trace out any kind of reflection on black welfare, for instance, sparing black people from hearing that kind of heavelly racist information (which, as a matter of fact, only seems new to white people). this is obviously related to the sadistic gaze of racism being implemented at unconscious levels, even, to the white subjectivity. however, even when some white people try to reverse/retain this sadism, I wonder if this has some positive, transforming effect. I’ve heard recently, in one of the courses about white privilege, that the guilt cried in public, that uneasiness for being white, made the white person feel like she was favoring the “black cause” (“your cause”, she answered me). for the sake of a revanchism, maybe? or some kind of revenge?. but if the main topic here is social justice (my interest, the focus of my political action) & not BDSM, what kind of solution that would be? how, I asked her, would your uneasiness favor me? ¿ isn’t it peculiar how, almost to fake a classic performance in the colonial european-white-catholic (de)formation, a suffering white cross is raised, on which the bodies effectively crucified (because the suffering from white guilt is an spectator suffering) have dark shades like “fine bronze, a jasper stone and a sardius”, as the biblical book of revelation describes the protagonist who has been occupying this scenery for millenia, (circa 2 thousand years, to be more precise), in spite of the tons of face powder to whiten him? no matter what, white guilt isn’t black responsibility, except in cases of a black therapist treating a white person possessed by this really riveting phenomenon of contemporary racism among activists (but it would still be co-responsibility). as all white guilt (I see categorically, religiously), should be treated in therapy. taking this symbolic cross off of the white shoulders that don’t try to treat it, or at least carry it as their own cross (to the point of any occasion between/with black people serving to their expiation public show), perhaps would allow white people to observe more useful practices in this context, such as effective responsibility. racial literacy (which must be, in practice, unlearning about racism). reparation, when and if possible. or just a temporary suspension of this aburrido me me me.
TATIANA NASCIMENTO is a writer, singer, songwriter, and editor at Padé Editorial (where she publishes artisanal books from other black authors and/or LGBTQIs). She holds a bachelor degree in Portuguese Literature by the University of Brasilia and a PhD in Translation Studies by the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Tatiana published the books Esboço (2016, Padé Editorial), Lundu (2016, Padé Editorial), Mil994 (2016, Padé Editorial), 07 notas sobre o apocalypse, ou, poemas para o fim do mundo (2019, garupa+kza1 Editorial) and Quando (?) nossas mortes importam (2019, Macondo Editorial). You can see more of her work at her website: www.pade.lgbt/tatiana, or in her IG account: @tatiananascivento
READING FRANTZ FANON IN THE ERA OF BLACK LIVES MATTER by Frieda Ekotto Archive photos
What matters is not to know the world but to change it. - Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks Today, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, after Barack Obama’s presidency and in the era of Donald Trump, after the violent events of Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York, and as we watch the rise of white nationalism in Charlottesville, Virginia, Christchurch, New Zealand, and recent mass shooting in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio to name just a few places, racial politics remain entrenched in American life. In addition, as the refugee crises, the potential withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, and the 2019 parliamentary elections in Europe have shown, reverberations of the colonial past are palpable in contemporary upheaval, discord, and violence. These societal ills all have their origins in history and memory, origins that have often been overlooked, if not erased, even as they continue to affect our contemporary world.
To address this history alongside current events, this paper reads Black Lives Matter together with Frantz Fanon’s work on the struggle for the dignity of Black people around the world. It demonstrates how, in addition to the work of Négritude thinkers (Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Léon Damas, and W.E.B. Du Bois), Fanon’s writing offers the historical background necessary for understanding the Black Lives Matter movement and, more broadly, the Black American experience during the second decade of the twenty-first century. Fanon was among the first to articulate enduring questions about the Black condition in the world, and his theoretical insights establish why there will be no peace as long as the dignity of Black men, women, and children are ignored, their lives crushed. Fanon’s seminal articulation of how colonialism produces trauma, chaos, and loss only grows in importance as time passes. In his work, he confronts the disturbing ways in which racial violence is repeated due to its entrenchment in the cultural imaginary, and despite Black subjects’ efforts to speak out against domination. In this chapter, I will focus upon how his work can help us to better understand the Black Lives Matter movement, which has undertaken the recuperative work of exposing violence against Black people by bringing attention to whiteness and the White gaze. I give particular attention to Fanon’s insights into the violence of the Black condition and how Black people must transform this violence into acts of resistance. I begin by discussing a formative moment in Fanon’s text Black Skin/White Masks, when he first felt consciously compelled to transfrom the violence of the White gaze into action. I then describe how the Black Lives Matter
23
movement has channeled quotidian violence against Black Americans into a powerful movement. I finish by reflecting upon the continuity between Black Lives Matter and previous American movements, even as I consider how its unique qualities appear to be shaping new modes of representation in mainstream media. As a young man, Fanon embraced Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of “committed literature,”1 and, at the age of 26, he wrote Black Skin, White Masks (1952) with a clear purpose: to identify racism, its societal underpinnings and functioning, its effects on Black men such as himself, and, most importantly, the necessity of action in the face of discrimination. Fanon, in his work as a psychoanalytic theorist, he powerfully evoked the ongoing traumas of racism and the therapeutics of psychic and social change. Fanon foregrounds the moment he saught to transform this violence against Black men into action in the opening lines of “The Fact of Blackness,” a critical chapter in Black Skin, White Masks. There he recounts two overwhelming and emblematic verbal attacks on his personhood, which he endures as a Black man living in France. They are, first, the common epitath “Dirty nigger!” and, second, “simply,” as Fanon puts it, a young boy’s casual remark to his mother, “Look, a Negro!” (Fanon p. 109)2. These remarks, by being both extraordinary and quotidian, bring Fanon to reflect upon the paradox of living as a Black man in a rascist, colonial society.
1967, p. 109). He thus begins to present the paradox that is a key element in his work: the fact of being both seen and not-seen. One generally feels that in being seen one is given value, and thus one seeks it out, but what Fanon realizes is that, as a Black man, he is fundamentally not being seen; he is only present as an object. This moment is of pivital importance; however, because the realization it provokes compels to Fanon to take action to transform a White imaginary that insists on the objectification of Black men. He also claims with much controversy that blackness – as most Blacks live and experience it – is actually a creation of, and a reaction to, whiteness, white history and culture, as well as white racial and colonial imaginaries. In exposing the fact that most Black lived experiences have been and remain constructed (or deliberately destructed) by Whites, Fanon seeks not to devalue the Black experience but to foster an anti-racist and, ultimately, revolucionary-humanist, active critical consciousness among Blacks (as well as among other non-Whites and Whites). This active consciousness is what makes Fanon’s work key to contemporary anti-racism movements such as Black Lives Matter. His call resonates, for example with that of Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement. In October 2014, she issued the following “herstory”:
I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects. (Fanon p. 109)
Black Lives Matter is about: how do we live in a world that dehumanizes us and still be human? The fight is not just being able to keep breathing as a human. The fight is actually to be able to walk down the street with your head held high – and feel like I belong here, or I deserve to be here, or I just have a right to have a level of dignity. (n.p.)
Raw and paralyzed by objectification, Fanon finds himself being restored to the world by the attention of others –the very liberating and vital attention of witnessing – only, and almost immediately, to “[fumble]... the movements, the attitudes, the glances of the other [fixing] me there...” (Fanon
In her articulation of a right to live in the world with dignity, Garza directly engages Fanon’s experience with the young boy, who so casually remarks on Fanon’s blackness. For Garza, this fight for dignity is urgent. In contemporary America, boys can carry guns and casual racism can too
frequently turn fatal. It is for this reason that Black Lives Matter demands that Americans draw their attention to the relationship between casual, unexamined rascism, the frequent deaths of Black men, and the equally frequent aquitals of White perpetrators. Since George Zimmerman, a white vigilante, was aquitted of killing Trayvon Martin in 2012, Black Lives Matter has insisted that American face the fact of brutality against young Black men. Even more, it has asked for action to holistically recognize the reasons for and the results of systemic, racialised violence.
or, rather, how not to feel the effects of a racist police state upon their daily lives. Then he can go about his job.
In the United States, reoccurring violence is incurred, in part, because of persistent clichés about young Black men, which continue to feed the imagination of some police officers as well as the public. This appears, starkly, in the words of Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In an interview that appeared in The New Yorker a year after the shooting, Wilson is quoted as saying: “We can’t fix in thirty minutes what happened thirty years ago … We have to fix what’s happening now. That’s my job as a police officer. I’m not going to delve into people’s life-long history and figure out why they’re feeling a certain way, in a certain moment” (quoted in Halpern 2015). Here Wilson suggests that racial violence has nothing to do with him. Rather he identifies the problem to be with “people’s life-long history.” In so doing, he indicates that even a year after the event, when he could have had the opportunity to reflect upon his actions, he still maintains that America’s racialized history is not his own, and that other people (Black people) need to figure out how they feel,
Wilson’s suggestion that he is not implicated in conditions of blackness is not a new one. Over at least the past one hundred years, Black writers, thinkers, and artists have documented similar refusals to confront this reality3. Yet it remains invisible because its perpetuation is controlled by dominant discourses. (Wilson’s comments make this point clearly enough.) One of the innovations of the Black Lives Matter movement is its use of social media to shift the focus of the gaze from Black bodies to the violence itself. This, in itself, is not new. We find the same idea, for example, in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Black Orpheus.” Writing from the perspective of a Black man, he challenges his readers “ to feel, as I, the sensation of being seen. For the White man has enjoyed for three thousand years the privilege of seeing without being seen” (Sartre 1948, p. 7). He continues: “Today, these Black men have fixed their gaze upon us and our gaze is thrown back in our eyes” (Sartre 1948, pp. 7–8). Yet the Black Lives Matter movement returns the White gaze with an important difference. It uses social media as a platform to demand that Black people be treated as human beings. This, in fact is an important intervention into the history of the White gaze. Today, anyone can snap a picture that has the potential to circulate globally. As accesibility and ubiquity have made images of violence commonplace, Black Lives Matter has created a model for how to use technology to continue the fight for Black dignity.
As Wilson’s case so starkly demonstrates, this denial of the importance of history and the refusal to examine one’s own perception continue to inflict violence upon citizens in the United States (and around the globe). It also brings us back to Fanon, who insisted that we do feel, and even more than we act. The “universe” into which Blacks find themselves is anti-Black, racist, and white supremacist. It is not a world that Black individuals have created or constructed. Thus, Fanon argues that we “must be extricated” from this inhospitable universe because Black individuals are not and cannot truly live, in any sense of the word, free, proud, and productive human lives in this current world.
Drawing from this important contemporary intervention, Black scholars are increasingly vocal in their insistance that White individuals examine both their own behaviors as well as their adherance to abstract ideas of nation, country and justice. As with Fanon, they are asking for a holistic examination of how institutions perpetuate and even enforce racial injustice that affects the well-being—and indeed the very lives—of Black Americans. In his opionion article for the New York Times, “Sacrificing Black Lives for the American Lie,” Ibrahim X. Kendi compellingly responds to a Minnesota jury’s decision, which places the responsibility for Philando Castile’s death, not on the police officer who shot him, but on Castille himself—despite video evidence to the contrary. Kendi argues: This blaming of the Black victim stands in the way of change that might prevent more victims of violent policing in the future. Could it be that some Americans would rather Black people die than their perceptions of America? Is Black death more palatable than accepting the racist reality of slaveholding America, of segregating America, of massincarcerating America? Is Black death the cost of maintaining the myth of a just and meritorious America? (Kendi 2017)
Kendi’s call echoes Fanon’s: to make claim to the validity of perspectives that come from the very experience of suffering, and the importance of fighting against forces that have created, perpetuated and hidden the depths of this systemic racism. Black Lives Matter continues the struggle for dignity, which Fanon and other thinkers demanded in the early twentieth century. Yet, while Fanon’s work is rooted in the complex history of blackness and anticolonial struggle, Black Lives Matter engages with similar conditions with the current situation of police brutality. But there is one issue, for which I find the leaders of Black Lives Matter move beyond Fanon’s own limitations: By bringing their own diversity of background and experience, they have expanded the range of people for whom it is essential to fight.4 Garza and the movement’s co-founders, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, are not only feminists and members of BOLD
(Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity); they are also active and vocal in their fight for LGBTQ rights. Garza, for example, has openly confronted the fact that, although their movement has been created by feminists and lesbians (Patrisse Cullors is openly gay), patriarchy—Black as well as White—continues to usurp their voices. Garza writes: Straight men, unintentionally or intentionally, have taken the work of queer Black women and erased our contributions. Perhaps if we were the charismatic Black men many are rallying around these days, it would have been a different story, but being Black queer women in this society (and apparently within these movements) tends to equal invisibility and non-relevancy (n.p.)
That is why, for Garza, Black rights must converge with the rights of other groups, particularly gay, trans, and disabled people who are oppressed in their own Black communities. Each of these groups has had significant and unique experiences, and they often draw from these experiences in their calls to action. Indeed, Black Lives Matter goes beyond divisions that can be found within some Black communities, which call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, and which keep straight Black men in the front of the movement, while sisters, people who identify as queer and trans, and disabled folk are given background role or not acknowledged at all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, the undocumented, individuals with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum.
The coexistence between Black and gay rights is an important part of American history. It is one of the greatest alliances, a true legacy. It is crucial to interrogate the impact of the exclusions that accompanies acts of categorization and engage with the experiences of marginalized subjects in their multiple facets in order demonstrate the dysfunction of categories. Black Lives Movement does not display Black men walking next to those whom they victimize merely to create divisions. They do this to acknowledge that racism, sexism and homophobia together continue racist and colonial iterations of otherness. In the end, the fact of blackness remains the bedrock of historical reality for Black people around the world, even as the communication of this trauma entails a psychosocial compromise formation that necessitates a careful titration of these truths. I would contend, in accordance with Audre Lorde, that “it is not difference which immobilizes us but silence” (Lorde 1984, p. 144). Given that sexism, racism, and homophobia are “real conditions of all of our lives in this place and time,” our responsibility for the oppression of others (even as we are oppressed ourselves) requires that we “reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside [ourselves] and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there” in order that we “[s]ee whose face it wears” (Lorde 1984, p. 113). In the work of survival, we must break silences and respond to others, to make what Lorde calls poetry: the “revelatory distillation of experience” (Lorde 1984, p. 37). It is here that we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival, heal the devastating rifts between subjects produced and multiplied by trauma, and address oppressive and hierarchical constructions of difference in the psychosocial spaces (and there are no other) where communication and communion take place (Lorde 1984, p. 37). This work is continuing, and even gathering momentum in such mainstream forums as Netflix, which in summer 2019 released the series When They See Us, about the infamous,
false convictions of five men of color, Kharey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Raymond Santana Jr. on charges of a violent assault and rape, which occurred in New York’s Central Park in the spring of 1989. The expressed purpose of this series is to expose the way racial perceptions continue to allow these kinds of gross injustices to occur. In an inteview, director, co-writer and executive producer Ava DuVernay describes why she wanted the series to be called When They See Us rather than “Central Park Five,” which had been the series’ working title. She explains, “‘Central Park Five’ felt like something that had been put upon the real men by the press, the prosecutors, by the police. It took away their faces; it took away their families; it took away their pulses and their beating hearts. It dehumanized them. They are Yusef, Antron, Kevin, Raymond and Kharey, and we need to know them and say their names.” This act of revising history and making claims to names is just another way that contemporary Black activists are forcing discussions of whiteness into contemporary American discourse. They are inisting that Americans reassess their assumptions about how Black people are seen in contemporary American society. When They See Us recounts the complex racial circumstances that brough these boys to prison for the crime of being Black or Latino. It, along with other Black activists, asks us to consider the loss of dignity, of freedom, even of life, that, as Claudia Rankine writes in her book Citizen: An American Lyric, continues to be inscribed upon Black bodies and Black skin. Until this memory, this history and this present moment are seen, acknowledged, and honored, until White police officers can no longer offhandedly remark, “Look, a Black man,” and proceed to arrest or shoot him, the violence inflicted upon Black bodies will continue, and the dignity due to Blacks will be denied.
1 Littérature engagée, articulated by Sartre in “Qu’est-ce que la littérature.” For Sartre, to write was to take action.
Works Cited
2 The original expressions read “Sale nègre” and “Tiens, un nègre.”
DuVernay, Ava. “Opra Winfrey Presents: When They See Us Now.” Netflix Interview. https://www.netflix.com/ title/80200549
3 The Congolese philosopher Valentin Yves Mudimbe beautifully articulated that memory is part of history in The Idea of Africa. See Mudimbe 1994. 4 We find in contempary readings discomfort with Fanon’s apparent disregard for women. This is perhaps most clearly manifested by the fact that he never directly cites his engagement with the work of Simone de Beauvoir, which is was certainly important to the development of his ideas. As displayed in the film Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Mask by Isaac Julien (1995), Fanon was also homophobic.
Fanon, Franz. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. Grove Press. Garza, Alicia. 2014. “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement by Alica Garza.” October 7, 2014. https:// news.northseattle.edu/sites/news.northseattle.edu/files/ blacklivesmatter_Herstory.pdf Halpern, Jake. 2015. “The Cop.” The New Yorker, August 3, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2015/08/10/the-cop Julien, Isaac, dir. 1995. Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Mask. Kendi, Ibrahim X. 2017. “Sacrificing Black Lives for the American Lie.” The New York Times, June 24, 2017.
FRIEDA EKOTTO is a professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and of Comparative Literature and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan. Frieda is the author of ten books. Her early research traced interactions between philosophy, law, literature and African cinema, and she currently works on LGBT issues, with an emphasis on West African cultures within Africa as well as in Europe and the Americas. In 2017, she co-produced the feature-length documentary Vibrancy of Silence: A Discussion with My Sisters, which premiered at the University of Michigan. That year she also received an Honorary Degree from Colorado College and in 2018 was given the Zagora International Film Festival of Sub-Sahara Award for her work in African cinema.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/opinion/ sunday/philando-castile-police-shootings.html Laymon, Kiese. 2018. Heavy. Scribner. Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley: Crossing Press. Mudimbe, Valentin Yves. 1994. The Idea of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rankine, Claudia. 2014. Citizen: An American Lyric. Graywolf Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul.1948. “Orphée noir” in Léopold Sedar Senghor, Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française. Presses universitaires de France.
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by Luciane Ramos-Silva photo Artist´s courtesy
We met Grada Kilomba on a typical São Paulo’s winter morning. The pouring rain splattered our eyes while we waited at the entrance of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo - a museum that tells some histories of the art and that has been slowly proposing deconstructions of its Eurocentric legacy through the acquisition of works created by black artists, promoting exhibitions and specific reflections that cross the expanded field of the arts, its powers and privileges. The exhibition Poetic Disobediences, was the motto and meeting place with this artist who reflects on colonial legacies and proposes ways to respond to them, breaking hardwoods of a long-standing colonial architecture. Big questions seem to require more than a discipline to answer them. The hybridity of languages proposed by Kilomba, calling for several forms of communication and questioning, dismantle the very common hierarchies of knowledge vein the hegemonic structures of knowledge. Her broad movement in different areas generates a transit between the academic and the artistic, bringing possibilities of access and dialogue. The author has been read by many eyes, including the young black population. Somehow her work, an affluent of authors such as the Martinican Frantz Fanon (19251961), founding thinker for the analysis of the colonial world, its processes of racialization and the crossings with language, or the Indian Gayatrick Spivak (1942 -), who in the 1980´s drew attention to the enunciative restriction of the subaltern subject, among other authors, moves beyond academic fields and opens it up to the world, gaining new contours. The installations and performances proposed by the thinker, as well as her book Plantation memories, released in Brazil at the same time as the exhibition, question us for the right to restore voices and bodies that for so long had been described from the poisonous gaze of white supremacy - deprived of humanity,
punished and criminalized black populations throughout history. What reactions resonates when the public faces canon narratives of Greek mythology performed by black people in stories like those of Narcissus, Echo and Oedipus that elucidate human conflicts? Grada unravels the ideals of universality rooted in the collective imagination in its diverse creative acts. The presence of the exhibition Poetics Disobediences at Pinacoteca perhaps only represents ephemeral cracks considering the long racist history that permeates Brazilian museological institutions as well as the small access that the black and peripheral population has to these spaces. However, its images and movements will not be easily forgotten. Grada Kilomba’s attempt to create new configurations of power and knowledge is a search of great relevance for our Brazilian time / space, because in the different areas of knowledge we have discussed new epistemes rooted on black and indigenous experiences. ***
LRS: In terms of area of expertise or fields of knowledge production, how would you present yourself ?
GK: After many years of struggle my work is very hybrid. The question of who you are and how you define yourself has always been very overwhelming to me. As my work is hybrid, I consider that many disciplines has many facets. Because my work is a work of decolonization, it is a transdisciplinary work. I cannot be anchored to a single facet, I think. You have to create another form, another language... Lan-
guage is a classical format, a classical discipline. When we ask “Who are you?” What you do?”. We are always looking for a definition, a format, a discipline or a major conflict. And then, there is also a hierarchy of saying who’s who. For example psychoanalysis always comes first, the university professor comes first... This hierarchy of knowledge. I spent some time with these conflicts between writer, psychoanalyst, university professor and all that. I think the best definition for me is an interdisciplinary artist. I think that a person who makes art and uses various disciplines to do things...I think that’s where I have more freedom. Because it does away with the hierarchy of knowledge: what can be, what should be.
LRS: Thinking about hierarchies of knowledges, Art seems to have an important place in your work. Art touches people in a way that other areas are not able to do so. GK: I think we live in a critical moment: we know all these disciplines, we study, but all separate from each other. Dance is dance, but there is no theoretical discourse that takes care - often - behind dance. Then dance may become empty. Or performance... then may quickly become empty... I think this is the crisis of colonialism, because they are very colonial, very hierarchical disciplines. Theater, dance, performance, singing, literature are extremely hierarchical and has an extremely phallic structure, extremely patriarchal. I say phallic in the sense of: you learn something and then you do a master’s degree on that thing, and then you specialize on that same thing and then a Phd on that thing. And that goes on and on,
and up, up and always up. So, the way we understand who we are is very patriarchal, a very phallic concept. I think that one thing we do in decolonization is exactly to work in circles or in cycles, which is more round and transdisciplinary. For example: Anthropology stops with choreography; history and music; postcolonial theory has different means etc. It is a dialogue between different disciplines and that is what I am interested in doing. This is not possible to do when you are anchored to a single discipline. But I think that is what we should do in all subjects when we study and when we go to university. These are disciplines that created the state of violence that we inhabit. This is colonialism through the production of knowledge to sustain and justify colonization. So it was through philosophy, anthropology, theater, film; through imagery, which played a very important role in fascist and colonial propaganda. They are all disciplines that have contributed exactly to what we do not want to be - which is to create a black body, the black identity as the Other, as the deviant, as the different as the pathological. They are disciplines that categorize us. So, creating new formats, creating these hybrids for me is fundamental because I cannot tell the stories that I want to narrate with the disciplines that did not let me be the author of my own story. I think the works here - of course there are a series of forms that intersect - and for me that is the intention of exactly that disobedience.
LRS: Poetic desobedience... GK: That is why this exhibition is called “ Poetic disobedience”, exactly. You have to be disobedient, because obedience is dominant narration where my story cannot be told. So, there has to be a poetic disobedience.
LRS: Thinking about these “states”, these contemporary colonialites, do you think that the old metropolis whether Portugal or Germany, in different ways, are critically reviewing their places as colonizers?
GK: I think it’s a very slow process. Me, for example, I think the book “Plantation Memories”, that has now been translated a month ago in Lisbon, Portugal, and a month later, in Brazil, but 33
eleven years late. I think this delay shows. I think it was not possible to publish this and many other books before, because they are nations (Lisbon and Portugal) that live in denial. It is no accidental that I published the book eleven years late. That book in a foreign language, in a country where I am a foreigner, which is German, and eleven years ago – even though I was a foreigner and immigrant black woman I was able to publish the book in Berlin but it was not possible to publish here. I think that there are different states that have to do with this work of the “dictionary”. I think Portugal, like Brazil, lives in a state of denial, and denial romanticizes the past. Denial doesn’t acknowledge the present. To oppose the present and want to reenact the past. That is negation. I think that these countries and many others glorify the past and created their identity around glorification and romanticization of the colonial past. I think here even more than in Portugal. Because Portugal went through a democratic revolution, it went through the end of fascism and a popular revolution too. It went through to a similar process like this in Angola, it went through a decolonization: the names of the cities, the rivers, everything was changed. There was a restructuring. And Brazil is a successful colony. It was colonized by colonizers and is in the hands of the colonizers. So this process of decolonization, revolution, radical restructuring did not happen here (in Brazil). So here, perhaps this history of denial is even more present. If I don’t look at where I am and if I don’t accept the guilt and the shame... we have no sentiment of guilt or we have no sham. On the contrary: there
is immense pride. We talked about a colonial history without thinking about the complexity of what that means. We speak the Portuguese language as if it were the most beautiful language in the world, which is an extremely violent, patriarchal, colonial language. When we translated the book into Portuguese “Plantation Memories” was a horror because when we received the translation we realize oh my god... what a terrible language it is... because suddenly the phrases don’t make sense, because the terms only exist in male condition , for example. But what does it mean when a black woman is writing a text? I cannot write with a male condition. It makes absolutely no sense. After checking how terminologies are and they are all colonial and anchored in the colonial and racist nomenclature. We don’t have an alternative. Full article available on portuguese in 21th Edition of OMenelick2Ato brasilian version.
LUCIANE RAMOS-SILVA is co-director of the magazine O Menelick 2º Ato. Luciane is a dancer, independent curator, choreographer and anthropologist with a transdisciplinary background. She holds a PhD in Performing Arts/Dance from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP - 2018). Luciane is also the cultural manager of Acervo África – a research and educational center for material African culture in São Paulo, Brazil. She leads regular dance trainings based on multi-corporealities and decolonized gesture of the Black diaspora at Sala Crisantempo in São Paulo, Brazil. She works and researches on performance and African studies, as well as on education.
VIOLENCE AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN BRAZIL KILLED BECAUSE OF LAND CONFLICTS The number of indigenous leaders killed in conflict in the fields in 2019 was the
highest in the last 11 years.
According to CPD (Comissão Pastoral da Terra) 7 people were killed in 2019,
compared to 2 in 2018.
BLACK CURATION IN THE VISUAL ARTS – PATHS OF AFFIRMATION
by Adriana de Oliveira Silva photos Chuck Martin, Kléber Amâncio, Gisamara Oliveira, Luiz Alves and MANDELACREW Amidst the difficulties for penetrating a market that has been for a long time – and still is – almost exclusively white, the curatorship exercised by black men and women represents a path of affirmation, to be conquered and owned. Fruitful in the formation of utopias, the field of the arts may also amaze by its insistence on maintaining the status quo, especially in a country like Brazil, with a history marked by racism and authoritarianism. It is no coincidence that in the last five years we have witnessed an “emergence” of racially biased art exhibitions, demanding a greater “visibility” of black artists, black issues and black modus operandi. Among the major black curated exhibitions in recent years in Brazil – both in number of works and institutional visibility – are “Histórias Afro-Atlânticas” (Afro-Atlantic Histories), 2018, at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) and the Tomie Ohtake Institute, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Tomás Toledo, and two black curators Ayrson Heráclito and Hélio Menezes. The exhibition can be understood as a kind of “racialized” continuation, in the topic and curatorial principles, of “Histórias Mestiças” (Mestizo Histories), 2014, curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, presented at the Tomie Ohtake Institute; and “Territórios: Artistas Afrodescendentes no Acervo da Pinacoteca” (Territories: Artists of African Descent in the Collection of the Pinacoteca), 20152016, at the Estação Pinacoteca, curated by Tadeu Chiarelli. The latter included texts by the black curators Claudinei Roberto da Silva and Fabiana Lopes in their catalog. There were other minor exhibitions organized by black curators, such as ““(Re) conhecendo a Amazônia Negra: Povos, Costumes e Influências Negras na Floresta Negra” ((Re)cognizing the Black Amazon: Black People, their Customs and Influences in the Black Forest) a solo exhibition by the black photographer Marcela Bonfim,
curated by photographer Mônica Cardim, at Caixa Cultural (2017); “Agora Somos Todxs Negrxs?” (Are We All Blacks Now?), at the Galpão VideoBrasil (2017), by Daniel de Lima -- artist, curator and founding member of the Frente 3 de Fevereiro collective; “Afro como Ascendência, Arte como Procedência” (Afro as Ascendancy, Art as Origin), curated by Alexandre Araújo Bispo, based on the project of the artist and teacher Renata Felinto, at SESC Pinheiros (2013), to name just a few of the ones which occurred in the city of São Paulo downtown area.
BACKGROUND Black curatorial experiences are not recent: just remember the inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Black Art, at Rio de Janeiro’s MIS, ideated by Abdias do Nascimento, in 1968. Or the trajectory of the artist, collector and curator Emanoel Araujo who was the director of Pinacoteca between 1992 and 2002. He purchased works of black artists and organized exhibits such as “Vozes da Diáspora” (Voices of the Diaspora) (1992), and “Herdeiros da Noite: Fragmentos do Imaginário Negro” (Heirs of the Night: Fragments of the Black Imagery) (1995). Emanoel Araujo has also been the curator, at MAM, of the exhibit “A mão Afro-brasileira” (The Afro-Brazilian Hand) (1988), and, as part of the Rediscovery Exhibit, in 2000, of the “Negro de corpo e alma” (Body and Soul Black), a great inventory of the image of black people in Brazil. Araujo, by the way, continues to be the main curatorial reference when it comes to fight racism using art as a sword, a proficiency he gained through exhibits and catalogues, as well as an extensive and collaborative research on the Black question, which culminated in the Afro Brazil Museum, founded by him in 2004. It is also necessary to remember
the Brazilian-Congolese anthropologist Kabengele Munanga, who has also acted as curator, with emphasis on the exhibition “Arte Afro-Brasileira” (Afro-Brazilian Art), which was part of the Discovery Exhibition, in 2000. However, one can argue that the pressure for black artists and black curators in Brazil to participate in art became even more decisive when segments of the Brazilian society began to unveil their rejection to black empowerment. This empowerment resulted from popular and governmental actions such as the compulsory inclusion of African and Afro-Brazilian culture in the educational curriculum, the creation of the Secretaria de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial – SEPPIR (Office of Racial Equality Promotion Policies) in 2003, the promulgation of the Racial Equality Statute in 2010, and the ruling by the Brazilian Supreme Court, in 2012, on the constitutionality of racial quotas. This broadened context can help to explain why the use of blackface in a play performed at Itaú Cultural Institute in São Paulo, in 2015, sparked numerous protests by black people, resulting in the cancellation of the play. The incident generated a discussion about the representation of black people in arts throughout the country, and about the absence of black artists and curators in important roles in the field of arts. The debate was organized in a series of colloquia titled “Diálogos Ausentes” (Absent Dialogues), curated by Rosana Paulino and Diane Lima, at Itaú Cultural, in 2016. This kind of uprising by black artists can be considered an indication, in the arts field, in cultural centers, galleries, museums, and other artistic spaces, of a certain openness to the thought and production of black people and other “minority” groups in public spaces and in positions of prestige. It is not a matter of benevolence, as many have indicated, but a strategy for public approaching which does not fail to expressing a market bias. This can be confirmed by the number of visitors attending the “ Histórias Afro-Atlânticas” (Afro-Atlantic Histories) exhibition -- 180 thousand at MASP, and 135 thousand at Tomie Ohtake -- and the “To the Northeast” exhibition, at SESC 24 de Maio. On the one hand, it is evident that this is a time of higher recognition for black thinkers in the field of arts, no matter if they
Emanoel Araujo
are acting as artists, curators, critics, academic or non-academic researchers -- if fact, some of them accumulate several of these roles. But, on the other hand, it is worth noting that this same visibility lets out the racism upon which the field of arts, as well as many other in Brazil, are structured. In this article, we will observe this situation from the point of view of black male and female curators who, with greater frequency and publicity, have been invited or have had projects accepted by cultural institutions of all sizes throughout the country. The professionals presented here emerged from a succinct mapping previously done by O Menelick, but also by those with whom we spoke during our doctoral research on Afro-Brazilian art. These curators named other colleagues, as well. The majority of the curators mentioned here are from the state of São Paulo or work there, although we were also able to map professionals in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco, Fortaleza, and Rio Grande do Sul. It is a kind of task that, we know in advance, will have absences. Therefore, new additions are more than welcome, as we need to face the “provocation” of Bahian artist and curator Tiago San’Ana, who says: “Do you research, enjoy, and disseminate Afro-Brazilian or Afro-Southeastern art? Because there is a repetition of repertoires in exhibitions, festivals, and publications, despite the diversity of Brazil.”
EVERYDAY RACISM IN THE ARTS FIELD At the same time that a greater number of black people have finally taken their positions as proponents of narratives other than mere mestizo
or slavery stories, structural and institutional racism has become even more poignant. Eugenio Lima says, on the challenge of being a black curator or taking any other position involving knowledge production in Brazil: “I have come to understand more and more Carlos Moore’s central thesis that racism is the global system, and capitalism is merely its mode of production.” For this actor, DJ, curator, and activist born in Recife and raised in São Paulo, the idea of the Cuban social scientist based in Brazil helps to explain why the ability to narrate and produce knowledge has been denied to non-white people, women, the poor, transsexuals, etc. However, art is the main battleground to transform this situation, according to Eugenio, because it is the most potent means to create new images and narratives about the black world: “It is not by chance that the term négritude was born in the poetry of Aimé Césaire and then appropriated by politics.” And this is why Eugenio Lima defends that black curators, these conveyors of narratives based on art objects, need to be interdisciplinary and inter-sectional. That is, curate music, visual art, scenic art, paintings, sculptures, etc. from a point of view that also takes into account race, gender, and class, just like he has learned from Carla Akotirene and Djamila Ribeiro. Rio de Janeiro-based professor and curator Keyna Eleison tells that, when she began to work as pedagogical coordinator at the Escola Livre de Arte at Laje Park, in Rio de Janeiro, her body and her ideas made reference to no one less than Lélia Gonzales, anthropologist from Minas Gerais, founder of the Brazilian Unified Black Movement, who had established the Department of Black Studies there. The perverse detail is that this had happened many years before. “It took the institution forty years to hire another black person for a knowledge producer position. And they only noticed that when I arrived,” explains Keyna, stupefied. Hélio Menezes, Bahian anthropologist based in São Paulo who emerged as a curator at the exhibit ““Histórias Afro-Atlânticas” (Afro-Atlantic Histories), at MASP and at the Tomie Ohtake Institute in 2018, explains that the presence of Black curators on the exhibit’s curatorial team was strategic in order to avoid sharp criticisms like the ones he received for ““Histórias Mestiças” (Mestizo Histories), at the 39
Tomie Ohtake Institute in 2014, and at the seminar that would help to conceptually construct the exhibition in 2014. “MASP had organized a seminar, ‘Histories of Slavery,’ that was heavily criticized by black artists, researchers, and curators for reaffirming that the history of black populations in Brazil began with slavery, when the research of Black intellectuals demonstrates that this history precedes slavery, and, therefore, the Portuguese domination during the colonial period,” he states. Therefore, narrating Afro-Atlantic histories rather than histories of slavery means telling a history from a perspective that is not euro-centric. “Of course there is an interest in the visuality created by slavery, even because it disrupts the world of art, like in ‘Scipio, the Negro”, that French artist Paul Cézanne painted inspired by a photograph of a tortured North American enslaved back man. Although the quantity of works that portray slavery, forced labor, torture, and hyper-sexualization of black bodies is massive, it is necessary to go beyond them, if we do not want to reaffirm a history of submission. To do this, according to Hélio Menezes, it was necessary to dive headfirst into the contemporary black production in Brazil and abroad to bring in other visual narratives in which black bodies appear beyond slavery, or, if related to slavery, in a critical way, thus conveying Afro-Atlantic histories that go through slavery, but do not fixate on it. Another black curator invited to compose the curatorial team of “Histórias Afro-atlânticas” (Afro-Atlantic Histories) was the Bahian Ayrson Heraclito. In the module “Routes and Trances: Africa, Jamaica and Bahia,” part of the exhibition “Afro-Atlantic Histories” Heráclito had the opportunity to display another way of understanding the artistic production arising from the Afro-Atlantic diasporic routes, the subject of his research. He did the same in 2019 at the exhibition “Ounje – Alimento dos Orixás” (Ounje – Food for Orixás), at SESC Ipiranga, in São Paulo, for which he acted as one of the invited curators. Thinking about the exhibition that Luciara Ribeiro curated, “Diálogos e Transgressões” (Dialogues and Transgressions), at SESC Santo Amaro, in 2017-2018, the question arises of how to
react to those who say that racialized art is not art. The curator says: “For that, it is important to master the (Western) discourse of art, as well as to have a background like mine.” (Luciara holds an M.A in Art History from Unifesp and the University of Salamanca, in Spain.) “Many people try to disarm you with arguments art history arguments because they think you do not master the knowledge they do. This is when you show that, apart from knowing what they know, you have a specific knowledge about non-hegemonic artistic productions that they do not have. Then, black researchers, curators, and artists have a bonus, not a deficiency, in relation to their white peers.Hence the fragility of whiteness, which attacks when it realizes it can lose privileges. And we need to be prepared to defend ourselves in a way that surprises white people, instead of attacking for attacking.”
CURATORSHIP BY FEMALE AND MALE BLACK CURATORS Most interlocutors conceive curatorship as a process broader than the exhibit itself, which may include the selection, the acquisition of objects, performances and other artistic expressions and their subsequent documentation, analysis and storage, and also the research, planning and assembling of exhibits based on these materials. Far from being just the selection of a set of artistic expressions, curatorship is the construction of points of view. And as such, it can reiterate or de-construct hegemonic reasoning. Some curators emphasize their status as researchers, educators and artists, or even the sum of all these, to affirm (or subvert) their work as curator. Among those who define themselves most firm-
ly as researchers is Amanda Carneiro. In 2018, she had her first curatorship, the exhibit “Ainda Assim me Levanto” (In Spite of that I Rise), showing the work of Minas Gerais-born artist Sonia Gomes at MASP, where she currently works. That is why she says she’s “acting as curator at the moment,” as she’s been working in museums for ten years, but only now is signing a curatorship. Carneiro has worked in the educational sector of the Afro Brazil Museum, as well as a researcher on contemporary African art in Mozambique and Germany. The hesitation to define herself as a curator comes from the fact that she has signed few curatorship so far. And, above all, because she argues that “it is necessary to remove from the curator the sacrosanct role of the guardian of knowledge, contact articulation, and exhibit policies.” Research is also the central point for Leandro Muniz: “I am an artist and curator, but I prefer to say I am an artist and researcher,” he says. Since he obtained his B.A. in visual arts, he has been working as educator, artist and curatorship assistant, and as curator, independent curator and, more recently, as a reporter for Select, a publication specializing in arts.“I curate because I make art and I am constantly in contact with many artists with whom I want to converse, not only in the private but also in the public sphere, initiating texts, interviews, debates.” In the definition of curatorship by anthropologist, curator and art critic Alexandre Araujo Bispo, the educational and inter-sectional character of the work have a prominent position: “curatorship is selecting and suggesting relationships among things, among points of view. Each work can be considered as at least one point of view.
Curatorship is gathering these points of view, these interpretative places, making one think relationships marked by the materiality of objects, and also by the race, gender and social class of their producers, audience and context, all together. And for that, the investment in teams of educators to dialogue with different audiences in the exhibits is quintessential, it is one of the main aspects of a curatorial project.” For professor and curator Igor Simões, “Curatorship is a composition, an assembly. Each work is a fragment that articulates with another, either by approximation or detachment. Hence my thinking of objects in ‘state of exhibit’; that is, able to take on different positions in different exhibit arrangements.” Igor Simões works at the State University of Rio Grande do Sul (UERGS) and at the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul (MARGS), where he also interacts with another black curator, Izis Abreu. Ayrson Heráclito’s simultaneous initiation as ogã, artist and teacher, – in the terreiro, the arts, and the university – marks his experience as curator. “I started curating because I am interested in aesthetic dialogues that test the boundaries between the curator and the artist. So, for me, curating has always been both a contemplative and inventive activity.” The experience as ogã -- priest in candomblé who is the right hand of the father or mother of Saint of a terreiro, and therefore responsible for the organization of rituals and the security of the incorporated entities -- enables Ayrson to build a long and respectful relationship with the artists he researches and curates. Another to overlap roles is the Bahian artist and curator Tiago Sant’Ana. By understanding curatorship as “an exercise to recognize artistic projects that are covered up by a perverse aesthetic, poetic, and technical hierarchization,” he ends up transforming research that would result in authorial work into a curatorship with various artists. An example of this was the “Kaurís” exhibition at Goethe-Institut in Salvador, in March 2019. The work was based on Salvador’s Revolta de Búzios -- one of the most important abolitionist movements in Brazil, but little known. The supporters used cowrie-shells (“búzios” in Portuguese) as a way of identifying themselves, as well as the artists’ works. According to
Tiago, the shells make allusion “to freedom and the future through an ancestral reading technique.” One of the most enduring experiences in curating is that of artist, educator and researcher Claudinei Roberto da Silva. At the moment, he is curator of “PretaAtitude” (BlackAttitude), an exhibit that has been traveling the SESC network since 2018. On curatorial choices or styles, their motivations and consequences in the case of black artists and curators, he states: “African-descent artists, we know, face historically determined restrictions that must be reported. Not by chance, the name of the exhibition: ‘PretaAtitude. Emergencies, Insurgencies, Affirmations: Afro-Brazilian Contemporary Art’ (“preta” means black, in Portuguese.) The large amount of works and artists in relation to the space available comes from that, but not only. When we understand the expography of the Afro Brazil Museum, we realize that, by conceiving nuclei with no divisions, that tiresome accumulation of information pops a giant bubble of prejudice. ‘Work and Slavery’ communicate with ‘Sacred and Secular Celebrations,’ which communicate with the ‘Academic Art,’ and with ‘Baroque’. That makes us understand that there is a plural sensitivity with Afro-Atlantic and Afro-Brazilian origins.” Claudinei also uses a comparison between MASP and the Afro Brazil Museum to defend his attitude: “It is interesting that MASP’s glass easels are considered revolutionary while the long-term exhibition at the Afro Brazil Museum is considered confusing, because the mental device that triggers one and the other is the same. What do easels do? They allow you to see the last work in perspective with respect to the first, in a space that is not enclosed by walls. And I, as a black curator in a racist country, am not going to claim or reproduce a certain kind of curatorship and expography that has excluded me, or banned me from certain places. Because the white cube, by sanctifying objects, has moved away more than welcomed black subjects and other subordinated subjects in relation to art. I can even do it, because
black artists and curators can and should do whatever they want. If they want to do minimalism, abstract or semi-open exhibitions, what is the problem with that? However, what they do, whether they like it or not, they do from their condition of being black. But it is a fact that in ‘PretaAtitude’ I decided to go another way, and present several artists in a rather limited space.”
BLACK REFERENCES TO APPEASE LONELINESS, SILENCE AND INVISIBILITY Together with the curator, educator and black photographer Jordana Braz, Luciara Ribeiro idealized the project “Experiências Negras” (Black Experiences), which premiered in August 2019 at the Tomie Ohtake Institute, precisely to promote debates lead by black people who work in various areas at the art and culture institutions of Brazil. Jordana Braz was the only black professional to be part of the team of educators, since the “Afro-Atlantic Histories” exhibition that was housed there, as well as at MASP. Back then, institutional racism became wide open when a banner reading “Where are the blacks?” was posted by the collective 3 of February Front right in the middle of the facade of Tomie Ohtake Institute -- a place where blacks were allocated to cleaning, security, and maintenance services. Luciara and Jordana’s first guests were curators Andrea Mendes, Iná Henrique Dias, and Keyna Eleison. Performer and curator Andrea Mendes conceived the collective Black Embodiments, in Campinas, to support the production of black artists: “Our work always receives a no, people always look with contempt at our art. I’ve been there as an artist. So, as a curator, I have a greater sensitivity. At the same time, I think, ‘gosh, who is going to be my reference as female curator?’ I didn’t know any black curators until then. Fabiana Lopes became my reference,
Keyna Eleison
Claudinei Roberto
Igor SimĂľes
Fabiana Lopes
as well as other black curators I met over time. Many times, blacks are not references to each other, but now we are making each other stronger.” Iná Henrique Dias is a photojournalist of Jornal Empoderado (Empowered Journal), an independent newspaper focused on “giving voice to the silenced and invisible, the peripherals.” She is also one of the founders of the collective Afrotometry, a word play combining “afro” and “photometry” -- the measurement of the intensity of light. A “racialized” collective, as Iná says, to recognize the intensity of the competence of black photographers works. “We did an exhibition at Casa Elefante, in downtown São Paulo, because we found several good black photographers from the poor outskirts of the city, from old school to youngster, such as Vilma Souza, Jéssica Alves, and Júlio César. We have to be everywhere.The joy of participating in an exhibition, of having your work recognized, is a matter of self-esteem.” The photographer also revealed her strategy to make up for the lack of material resources: “I started taking pictures in 2012, and my technique was quite poor, I didn’t have very good equipment, so what I did was studying and reading a lot, to know exactly what I wanted, what spot I wanted to claim as mine.”
the art market. We see that the strategy of these black curators is to racialize their experience in the arts world, foster self-esteem by creating a group with equals, and thus break the loneliness, silence and invisibility to which black subjects are often relegated.
BRAZILIAN BLACK CURATORS ACTING LOCALLY AND ABROAD
In 2019, Keyna Eleison started the Nacional Trovoa in Rio de Janeiro, a collective to bring together “racialized” female artists which rapidly expanded across the country. “Racialized women,” Keyna insists, “because there is a historical, racial cutout in the arts field – the white, male cutout. So, we cannot fall into the trap of separating art and politics; this is the same as saying that art is possible outside the planet, outside humanity.”
Acting as independent curator between New York and São Paulo, Fabiana Lopes was the professional most remembered by the curators we interviewed for being a pioneer in claiming a place for the production of black artists in contemporary art spaces.In addition to researching artists and writing about art criticism, Fabiana Lopes does the hard work of asking Brazilian gallery owners about the absence of black artists in the art galleries and, consequently, educating them about the importance and competence of these artists. One of the results was the individual exhibition of artist Lidia Lisbôa, “Entre tramas” (Among woven threads), in the Rabieh Gallery, in the middle of São Paulo’s whiteness territory, the neighborhood of Jardins, in 2015. Another curator from São Paulo who alternates between Brazil and abroad is Thiago de Paula Souza.
From the selection of black female artists who responded to Trovoa’s invitation, São Paulo-born Carollina Lauriano, sister of artist Jaime Lauriano, proposed the curatorship of the exhibition “A Noite Não Adormecerá Jamais nos Olhos Nossos” (The Night Will Never Fall Asleep in Our Eyes), at the Baró Gallery, in São Paulo, in 2019. Carollina is part of the curatorial team of the Ateliê397, an independent art space in São Paulo. Her central research theme the insertion of women in
He worked as an educator at the Afro Brasil Museum before taking off with international projects such as the 10th Berlin Biennale, between 2016 and 2018. Invited by South African female curator Gabi Ngcobo, he joined the curatorial team of “We don’t Need Another Hero.” Currently, Thiago is a member of the curatorial team of the third edition
of ‘Frestas’ (cracks), the Triennial of Arts at SESC Sorocaba. Diane Lima also found her place the international scene.In 2019, the creative director and curator from Bahia based in São Paulo worked as co-curator of the “Residência PlusAfrot,” at the “Villa Waldberta,” and of the collective exhibition “Lost Body -- Displacement as Choreography,” both in Munich, Germany. In 2018, she was curator of the Valongo International Festival of Image, in Santos, São Paulo. Today, alongside Thiago, she curates the third edition of “Frestas,” the Triennial of Arts at SESC Sorocaba.
MORE CURATORS In São Paulo, it is also worth mentioning Renato Araújo da Silva who, for over a decade, was a researcher and educator at the Afro Brazil Museum. Among his favorite research topics are African and Afro-Brazilian jewelry, in addition to the very concept of African and Afro-Brazilian art that resulted in curatorial works at the museum. Renato is currently the curator responsible for the research at the Ivani and Jorge Yunes Collection (CIJY), which resulted in the three modules of the exhibition “África” – Mãe de Todos Nós: Conexão entre Mundos, Símbolos de Poder, A Sonoridade da África” (Africa” - Mother of All of Us: Connection Between Worlds, Symbols of Power, The Sound of Africa) on display during the second semester of 2019 at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, in Curitiba, Paraná. Still in São Paulo, art historian André Pitol did an extensive research on the Brazilian photographer Alair Gomes, and participated as a cu-
rator of the pilot program “Consultas Curatoriais” (Curatorial Consultations), conceived to accompany the production of five residents artists at Pivô, at the Copan Building, in Sao Paulo. Among curators in Rio de Janeiro it is also worth mentioning the artist and researcher Camilla Rocha Campos, who is currently the artistic director of the artist-in-residence Capacete, a space that has been operating for twenty years; and Rafael Bandeira, at Caixa Preta, an independent space for contemporary art, where they develop collaborative and interdisciplinary experiments and research.
HOW ARE THE BLACK CURATORS DOING? Undoubtedly, there is greater visibility, but the number of black curators who occupy decision-making positions in cultural institutions is still minimal, since most of them define themselves as “independent curators”. Defining yourself as an independent curator may have a rebellious and charming tone, but it sometimes masks the precarious character in which most of the black curators perform their work. Curatorship is still a white profession, even when the artistic productions are black.Most of the time, it is still the white curator or white manager who invites or approves the project of the black curator, usually in a sporadic, late, and incomplete way. Hélio Menezes says that he and Ayrson Heráclito were called only in the last year of preparing the exhibition “Afro-Atlantic Histories”: “While the white curators, hired by the institution on a permanent basis, had three years of research, we had only one, which meant that we could not choose works from foreign collections, as these institutions plan loans one or one and a half years in advance.” Alexandre Bispo also stresses the institutional fragility of black professionals: “We, as black curators, do not yet have an experience of black curatorial abundance in the form of exhibitions, except for Emanoel Araujo. Exhibiting artwork is very expen-
sive, it depends on your relationships and networking in the field, it is not easy. And here in São Paulo, we no longer have Claudinei Roberto da Silva’s Ateliê Oço, which was a simpler and more open structure, focused on non-white Arts. So, as curator, I write more than I set up exhibitions.” In order to curate the exhibition “Em Três Tempos: Memória, Viagem e Água” (In Three Times: Memory, Travel and water), by Aline Motta, at the Cultural Center of TCU, in Brasilia, in August 2019, Bispo had to research the black and mestizo family in Brazil. In doing so, he imagined an exhibition that would bring together works by Albert Eckhout, Tarsila do Amaral, Lasar Segall, Guignard, Eustáquio Neves, Rosana Paulino, and Renata Felinto, among other artists whose works bring out multiple views of the black and mestizo family in Brazil. Alexandre also points out that the black curator is often invited to participate only at the end of the curatorial process. Although he is responsible for the selection and the dialogue with the artists, in terms of the exhibit, his role is usually writing the curatorial text, but not taking the decisions regarding the assembly of the exhibition, usually carried out by the institution that invites him. Despite the countless difficulties, one thing is granted: black artists and curators will not stop claiming their physical and intellectual presence in spaces of white privilege.The hiring of black people for management or curatorial positions is encouraging. In this sense, Renata Bittencourt has just taken up the post of executive director of the Inhotim Institute in Brumadinho, and due to her academic and institutional trajectory, we hope that this new position of power will benefit women, black, native and trans artists.
We have seen that exhibitions with black curators are an emergency, in the sense proposed by the editors of O Menelick when they thought of this issue, that is, something at one time ascending and urgent. An uprising, therefore, just like the closed fist black power, ready to deconstruct a scenario described by most of the curators in this article as “hegemonic”, “colonized”, “Eurocentric”, “homophobic”, “misogynist” etc. In short, “white”. Mere fashion or a real decolonization of the way of producing, thinking and displaying the various black expressions in Brazil? In order to build “a territory of Afro-Brazilian art”, according to Rosana Paulino, it is necessary to set up a tripod, which consists of fostering research, the production, and the circulation of art produced by black artists. “Fostering production is ensuring conditions for artists to produce a lot and freely. For this, it is important to research, to criticize, and to document in film and in photographs. These feedback circulation, which is both the exhibition and the acquisition of works by collectors and public and private institutions. This has been Claudinei Roberto da Silva’s work for a long time and now, more regularly, in SESC network, where he has been proposing exhibitions that make works circulate and be sold. And we have to write too, otherwise someone will write for us,” he points out. (…) Full interview/ text available on 21th Edition of OMenelick2Ato (Brazilian version, print) and on http://www.omenelick2ato.com/
ADRIANA DE OLIVEIRA SILVA is an anthropologist and journalist. In 2018, she defended her doctoral thesis Galeria & Senzala: a (im) pertinência da presença negra nas artes no Brasil (Gallery & Slave Quarters: The (Im)Pertinence of Black Presence in the Brazilian Arts), in the Department of Anthropology of the University of São Paulo. She is also a member of Napedra – Performance Anthropology Center, from the same Department. In addition to acting as a consultant in the areas of cultural diversity and creative writing, she researches how new political subjects have been using identity and difference issues to create (im)pertinent experiences in the world.
ALINE MOTTA
Pontes sobre abismos (Bridges over chasms) Series of photographs 2017
JOY GREGORY
Autoportrait 1989/1990
RENATA FELINTO Registro da performance Araújo, da trilogia Axé Marias! (Performance record Araújo, from the Axé Marias! trilogy) Photography Jaque Rodrigues 2019
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