Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
The idea for the installation Das avós, exhibited at the 21st Biennial, is quite old, and hadn’t materialized before for lack of resources. I thought mainly about who these women might be, and that one of them could possibly be my great-grandmother. Viewing them as matriarchs, as grandmothers, I reflected on what kind of affection I would like to show towards these ancestors—to cuddle them, offer them good food . . . in short, take care of these women. The project was basically born from that idea of affection, and also from my reflecting on how important the issue of ancestry was, and still is, for the black population, I thought that viewing them as distant relatives would be a great work of personal and collective healing.
The relationships between individual memory and collective memory are intermingled throughout my work, and operate in this piece as well. Individual memory lies in the possibility of having been close to two grandmothers and, therefore, thinking of sharing this experience with an “imaginary” great-grandmother. At the same time, in dealing with images that are in the public domain, I encroach the terrain of collectivity. In fact, these two kinds of memory, personal and collective, are essential in the construction of personality. No one is the result of only one or the other. What I do is bring collective memory—which at times can be thought of as ancestry—to the core of the work. This is something that is barely explored in contemporary Brazilian production, including the production of black women.
When I started out as an artist, the issues of gender and race were rarely discussed in Brazil. Such discourses are not totally acknowledged yet, but their acceptance is undoubtedly increasing, which is critical in a country in which almost 55% of the population see themselves as non-white. However, regarding this discussion within the country’s present context, the response to this stance is the strengthening of an idea of universalism, of a discourse that states we are “all human” and which irons out differences, while preserving inequalities. This conservative wave was to be expected. But I’m sure we’ll survive it. A people who arrived in the holds of ships, and even so was able to assert a culture, will not stop now.