Page 110 - ARTE!Brasileiros #43

WHAT UNITES US? ENGLISH VERSION
the permanent collection.
You’d say we’re on the same foot as we were in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s... Do we look a little at Africa, present at the show with photographs, ethnographic
I think we›re worse. Because there was a perspective of country, nation, And that pieces and contemporary works?
in a way ended. Suddenly. It was not even time for us to reflect. All I can say is that Yes, we look very little at Africa. We do not know Africa. Even black people think
in my time of formation it was more viable for someone to leave their place of origin that Africa is a country. And it is fundamental in the constitution of the changing
and go to the world. Going to the world meant what? Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and condition of Brazilian society. If it was not for Africa, what would it be? Imagine
even abroad. I see that today it is very difficult for a young artist to do this. From taking the nigger out of this whole story. It would be what? Portuguese and Indians?
my time here, what happened to Afro-descendant artists? That is why I think it is very important always this pantheon to say “look, this was
real here, it was true, it was significant, it was important in the constitution of
The history of the black people in Brazil is made of heroes, of great emblematic Brazilian society”.
figures, isn’t it?
This is a very Brazilian thing, you do not find it everywhere in the world. We can cite It seems you say that culture is not extinguished. In fact, the attempts at
the example of Mestre Valentim (1745 - 1813), who befriends the Viceroy Luís de erasure, absorption, end up leading to thinking the situation mistakenly as
Vasconcelos (1742-1809). They will work together, have an absolutely extraordinary just an ethnic issue ...
relationship because Brazil also has this, it is a country that is ambiguous. Ambiguity And it’s not an ethnic issue. Not an anthropological question. Not only that. And
is our most genuine way of being. Everything can and everything cannot. Everything much more. I do not know what would be of Brazil without these personalities. That
can, as you can break through this barrier. And everything can not because it cannot is what matters, that this complicity exists.
even anymore, because institutionally it is not to happen. When it does, it’s a case
in itself. So we are all exceptions to that. This ambiguity. COVER ARTIST | PAGES 70 TO 72
ART MADE BY BLACK PEOPLE.
Do you see your trajectory also within this profile of exceptionality?
in São Paulo. So much about my personal work is about this management issue DO YOU ACCEPT IT?
I was the other day looking at the published papers about my work since I arrived
that I got myself into, which is a different thing from the artwork. I’ve always had A CONVERSATION WITH MOISÉS PATRÍCIO ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCE AS A BLACK
my personal work as stubbornness. I started doing student politics, working for the ARTIST INSIDE THE MARKET AND THE ACADEMY. IN JUNE, THE ARTIST PARTICIPATES
Communist Party. But it was a milder time. When I arrived in São Paulo in 1965, I
had a single favela in Santo Amaro. WITH HIS WORKS OF THE EXHIBITION HISTÓRIAS AFRO-ATLÂNTICAS, AT MASP

In a way it seems like you’ve preserved this sweet, gentle, quiet time for your BY MATHEUS MOREIRA
artwork, no? This is the impression you have when you see the exhibition AT THE DOOR OF HIS ATELIÊ, Moisés Patrício, artist and art educator,
currently on display at Masp. welcome his guests with a smile and a hug. Fully dressed in white, the artist behind
The Masp exhibition comes from a time when I thought I should be more explicitly the photographic series Aceita? and the performance Presença Negra, which brings
Afro-Brazilian. A few years ago I thought I needed to stop being so Eurocentric. I together afro-brazilians attending to art galleries openings, explains that he occupies
felt that there was something more compelling in that sense. And I did so with the the apartment, borrowed by a friend, by two years now.
inspiration of joining my geometry, which already had ties to the African issue, with Patricio is an artist and he is an black man. For him, those two things must not
certain records that carried something religious. It was something that I entered, always be at the focus, but they shouldn’t be forgotten. “why is that every time an
I did that whole series, and then it leaves, also because it puts fear in people. It’s artist who is black is involved in an exposition or Project people call it ‘black art’?
hard to sell this work. Because nobody wants to have this stigma in front of you. Somehow this ends up reducing everything to this particular point. Nobody says
Impossible for someone to buy or want it. And since museums in Brazil do not buy, ‘white art’ when the artist is a White person”, questions (reflects?). For him, ar tis
we have to get and give. art, but Patricio doesn’t run away from criticizing his own thoughts, because he
already listened, from white, old and conservative artists, opinions such as “art in
As you see initiatives such as the exhibition “Histórias Afro-atlânticas”, which Brazil is going bad”, referencing the afro-brazilian and peripheral art. “I`ve heard,
Masp opens in June. from this white artists, that ‘art has no color or race, so there is no need to privilege
Revisiting this is very interesting, but its potential for change is little because some artists because they’re black”, he says. For him, this happens because a part
the museum’s reach is small. We cannot imagine that the museum could make a of brazilian art class is afraid of losing their (ou it’s?) privileges.
revolution. In 2014, black people were the majority of brazilian population with 54% of self-
reported race/ethnicity, but yet, the presence of this majority in artistic spaces keep
But he can play his part. And a little more. As you did. under the line of real population representative. Besides their low representativeness
Can do and should do. Especially if the museum has an Eurocentric content. We in art scenario, afro-brazilians continue to find difficulties in escaping from
cannot fail to welcome this deeper look at the social and historical situation of our stereotypes. Black people continue to be associated, artistically, to subjects as
lives. But much is missing. How many black artists have works in Masp’s collection? slavery, tribal costumes from african ethnicities e afro-brazilian religions.
I do not want to be pessimistic because otherwise I would leave, I would do nothing Nevertheless, the scenario begins to change and brazilian museums are opening their
else. But it is an insane battle to win over the public, to take a pejorative glimpse of it. doors to contemporary art of African origin. In may 2018th, the CCBB, Centro Cultural
Banco do Brasil, opened it’s largest exposition of african artists in São Paulo, that
In the case of “ Isso é coisa de Preto “, it shows currently, what is your starting were 90 works from 8 african countries and two afro-brazilian artists. Now, MASP,
point? There is a certain biting irony, no? the São Paulo Art Museum, considered the city’s post card, is devoting, for the time,
All the characters in Brazil’s political and public life who are black are “black.” it’s space fully to the exposition Histórias Afro-Atlânticas. And it doesn’t end there.
It is an affirmative form of the negative. We made a great collection of all those The Instituto Tomie Ohtake, placed in Pinheiros, an neighborhood well known by the
protagonists of Brazil that Brazilian society insists on not recognizing and that the population, has partnered with MASP to expose, together, more than 400 works of
history of Brazil continues not to recognize. Escape the Machado de Assis because 200 artists under the umbrella of Afro-atlânticas. Two rooms from the institute that
of these abortions, because he was extraordinary too. honors the japanese artist who died in 2015 at the age of 101, will be exposing works.
Moises is one of these 200 artists. At MASP, six of his works are ready to be exposed
The exception that confirms the rule... at the opening on june 29. The highlight is his photographic series Aceita?
IT IS. But who knows about Cruz e Souza, who is the greatest Brazilian symbolist,
one of the great symbolists of the world? Who knows about the Rebouças brothers? THE BLACK HAND AGING
About Paula Brito, who was the first Brazilian editor... No one knows. I mean, you still To walk by the city of Sao Paulo is to stand before many endings and beginnins
see and move you have certain positions that are revealing of this prejudice thing. all the time. From workers who give life to the city early in the earyly hours of the
morning, even before the sun comes up, to the daily products consumed waste from
The statistics are really terrifying urban life. Plastic packages and bags, paper, bottles, clothes, furniture, it is possible
Terrifying ?! It’s worse than the Ku Klux Klan. Here it is worse than any exception to find almost any kind of object at the city’s corners. The trash, for Patrício, says a
regime. It’s a genocide. Because if it is not misery, it is the police, if it is not the police lot. The Aceita? series exposes the artist restlessness with the city, with everything
it is the crime, it is the drug, the militia, the disease. This is hopeless. And you have that, according him, we don’t see when we discard the plastics, the lives, and all
no representatives. This museum happened by a personal will of mine. But it does kinds of assets with or without value.
not mean that this stubbornness has continuity. Moises explains that the series is born with his desperation to be assimilated by