Page 105 - ARTE!Brasileiros #55

i never met You, siDneY. Although we are Sidney, when I went to Africa, I could understand arrive. The doctor’s green eyes examined the
two plastic artists from the same generation, that “black” was created here in the Americas to puC diploma filled with gold writing. Then she
from the same city, we are not alive. This define, dominate and diminish us. A term that, filled out a form and asked me about my self-
mismatch is even rarer if we consider that we as I put it in the provocative question title of determination: black. I remember that I manage
are two black artists, an exception in the world our exhibition Agora somos todxs negrxs?, was to escape the statistic that places the black
of contemporary art – even more so in the early created to “signify exclusion, brutishment and population among the least vaccinated in the
2000s, when we started our careers. degradation, that is, a limit that is always conjured country. Brazil vaccinates twice as many white
In my first exhibitions, my path forked to a and abhorred”, writes Mbembe. But which, due people as black people (data from the Agência
distance away from the art galleries. I was part of to the need for survival, was redefined by a path Pública). I escaped because I am in the ranks of
this generation that opted for an encounter with of struggle in the same history of violence and those who have a degree in Clinical Psychology.
the city, with the contradictions of urban space. resistance. Being negrx has come to mean that This is a type of measure that underground
A battleground for poetic creations in a clash of we are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters opens the way for a white portion - which does

scale, languages and social-political contexts. of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. And since then, not necessarily have a greater risk - to get
While you were developing these powerful this black being “has become the symbol of a vaccinated first. “Accepting only the diploma
works that are part of the exhibition “Viver conscious desire for life, a thriving, floating and is a measure made for whites to get vaccinated”,
até o fim o que me cabe! - Sidney Amaral: plastic force, fully engaged in the act of creation the doctor agrees. And see myself here. Yes, we
aproximação”, curated by Claudinei Roberto and even in the act of living in several times and were always the exception, Sidney.
da Silva, I was also dealing with poetic works several stories simultaneously”.
with different plastic and conceptual solutions. I believe that this double that we reenact exhiBitions | museum of the portuguese language
But the crossings are the same, Sidney... together with so many others in this generation [pages44 to 48]
I realized these transversalities in my redefines meanings of consolidated images
encounter with his work when I was conducting and consolidating stereotypes. The black boy WORDS IN THE WORLD
the exhibition Agora Somos Todxs Negrxs?, at in the mask T-shirt; the soldier angel; the woman
Galpão Videobrasil in 2018. With the help of who smiles with a wreath of flowers… Ways of OF THINGS
Claudinei Roberto - who had been a colleague replacing images in the world – and, in this way,
at usp and who can certainly agree to be black we replace ourselves. The first exhibition opened at the Museum
in these spaces of exception - I was able to find These movements are aware of the limitation of the Portuguese Language, Língua
their works in their natural habitat: the studio in “simply establishing new symbols of identity, Solta is curated by Moacir dos Anjos and
where golden snakes with fork teeth lay down; new ‘positive images’ that feed a non-reflective Fabiana Moraes and puts contemporary
headless barbies in solid bronze; spoons eating ‘identity policy’”, as Homi Bhabha writes in The works of art in dialogue with objects,
traps. The drawings and paintings of a virtuosity Location of Culture. By wearing and provoking posters and other elements of everyday life
of technique meet this double of identity: the this double identity, we build a labyrinth that
contradiction of blackness. leads, after all, to the multiplex identity: not
Being part of a huge minority in contemporary fluid, amorphous or slippery, but solid on many By maria hirsZman
art and a majority in the population gives us sides defined by negation, by what we are not.
this certainty of the importance of inscribing Thus, the themes, whether slavery in the wiDespreaD presenCe oF the worD
this so invisible Afro-Brazilian perspective. At Gargalheira or quem falará por nós?, whether in the world of things, so evident and so little
the same time, the identity trap that we have the colonial Catholic religion in Demiurgo or O portrayed, is the theme of the Língua Solta
to transcend is certain. A double challenge to Pão Nosso, but also recent history in Diálogos/ exhibition, installed at the Museum of the
bring the unique context that forged us, but Encontro return as this “disjunctive present”, a Portuguese Language until the next month
also to cross the limits of what is considered present broken into conflicting, contradictory of October. Purposely mixing watertight
as a denunciation of social ills in our world. A interpretations. This shift bothers many because categories, such as high culture and popular
contradiction to be elaborated in two senses: it deconstructs worlds of stable beliefs. Only culture, contemporary art and mass culture, the
in relation to the identity trap and another, racial displacement, the black figure in the exhibition combines in the same space and in an
connected to identity, in the articulation of canonical context of art, displaces the world unordered manner a broad and significant set of
social denunciation and the announcement around them. contemporary works of art - already endorsed by
of other future perspectives. These myth images, memory images, time the market and the circuit - and a wide selection
The traps are similar insofar as they pose images that invade and colonize subjectivities, of objects, posters, packaging, commercial or
the problem of how to escape from the Sidney, are being reinscribed by us not as protest banners and other elements of everyday
frames created for a poetic political making. heroic symbols of a politics of identity. They are life. In both, the focus is on the language enhanced
In other words, Sidney, we were faced with the reinscribed in “the very textuality of the present, as a sign. “Looking at the surroundings, we try to
challenge of speaking from the place of black which determines both the identification with recognize that it is the language that animates
individuals - and in this operation of looking modernity and its questioning: what is the ‘we’ many of the objects around us”, describes Moacir
at oneself it is almost impossible to ignore the that defines the prerogative of my present?”, dos Anjos, who signs the curatorship together
violence that goes through us - but, at the same points out Bhabha. with Fabiana Moraes.
time, to undress black identity because they It is true that this “we” of the Brazilian nation There is no universalizing or encyclopedic
were created to bind us and hinder potentials never included us. And at this stage of capitalism, claim to the selection made by the pair. After
of life. As Achille Mbembe puts it in Critique many are beginning to realize that it doesn’t all, as Moacir says, “curatorship is always a
of Black Reason: include them anymore either. The current stage part of the world”. The choices derive from the
of exploration, whether material or cognitive, experiences - objective and subjective - of the
Does the Black Man not insist, still, places a vast majority side by side in a fractal couple in the field of art and culture. The result is
on seeing himself through and within of segregation. “From now on, everyone will an exhibition in which the word seems to rebound,
difference? Is he not convinced that he is be generically known as black”, affirmed the indicating different paths of apprehension of the
inhabited by a double, a foreign entity that Haitian Constitution of 1805, the result of the world. One of the most evident aspects is the
prevents him from knowing himself? Does only black revolt to take definitive power and clear presence of a political demand discourse.
he not live in a world shaped by loss and the first American nation to abolish slavery. “These are words that express desires, identities,
separation, cultivating a dream of returning “Now we are all blacks!” complaints”, explains Fabiana, emphasizing that
to an identity founded on pure essentialism We agree, between fits and starts, between there is no kind of hierarchy in the exhibition
and therefore, often, on alterity? battles and wars, between deconstructions and between a language aimed at entertainment,
decolonizations, that we will not succumb to political suggestion or poetic elucubration. The
This double in his work, Sidney, comes up in the kidnapping of the future. We re-enact the spectator is often presented with manifests that
attack on himself. Asserting oneself black in past with the delusions of the present. I see in express the urgency of the present day. There
image, plenitude, struggle, dignity, in a reverse his work, Sidney, a force nothing close to the is, for example, a set of letters and drawings
sense to the historical animalization of blacks surreal oneiric, but bordering on delirium: a sent by children living in Maré to the Court,
in the colonized world. Simultaneously struck power of fascination and hallucination. with reactions to the police repression. Or a
by the certainty that something bury us in a … plaque in honor of councilor Marielle Franco,
rhetoric of death: Sidney, I had a shot of the vaccine that whose murder goes unpunished. “They are
immunizes against the virus that causes like screams”, explains Fabiana.
(...) the fear felt by the millions trapped in Covid-19 the day I went to visit your exhibition Even non-linear and organized in order
the ruts of racial domination, the anguish Viver até o fim o que me cabe! In the morning, to promote sparks between different ways
at seeing their bodies and minds controlled I had prepared my documents. The doctor of dealing with ideas, forms and words, the
from the outside, at being transformed who greeted me after the short wait in line was exhibition is articulated around six main cores:
into spectators watching something that sitting in the disabled drive-thru. Some people media, resistance, home, street, religiosity
was, but also was not, their true existence passed by asking which vaccine was being and pedagogy are the words around which the
(mBemBe) applied and what day the Pfizer vaccine would various objects coalesce together. Many of the
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