Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Your creations cover the history of art and touch Brazilian historic contingencies. Which of the two histories inspires you the most?

I have always faced the study of art as a transdisciplinary phenomenon, where all knowledge regarding human experience is considered, including anthropology, psychology, philosophy, sociology, history, etc. I relate to themes and research objects through broad immersion; I am moved by curiosity, by the pleasure of investigation and invention. I understand that art works as a translator of mental structures and, therefore, allows the artist to cover specific permanences of the Western imaginary, whose use of historic sources is seen in a perspective of extracting archetypical coincidences and representations. When I talk about the economic decadence of colonial Bahia, I am not interested in rebuilding a historic moment, but in finding, in the past, possible readings for the contemporary days. Like, for example, in the social area. The way I face civil issues only makes any sense within a dialogue with the “origins” of these issues: racism, poverty, economic bankruptcy, etc. I seek senses, meanings, exercising “free thinking,” and creativity. That is, the possibility of lending new meaning to references through several different readings. A large part of my artistic production is an outlook into the history of my “village,” bringing to mind Homo Bhabha without the “nostalgia of life,” as I have a need to relate to the world that I live in, and which provides me with meaning. This world is not small, like a yard, it is large, broad, complex, and often obscure. History not only inspires me, but also accompanies my life and my production, and informs my gaze and my artistic comments.

The culture of Bahia is crossed by endless influences, also related to the idea of Brazilianness. In the memorial of your master’s research, you say that you seek to flee from a “folkloric” reading of local reality. How does this way affect your creative process? 

As an artist and researcher, I have dared to build a personal synthesis of the several cultures and styles present in the artistic activity of Bahia up to the present date. In this experiment, I have managed to find the moment of my insertion into regional artistry, while also making clear what my aesthetic engagements with the African-Bahian culture were. That is where a less folkloric reading of the local reality comes from, one that is present in works by artists from several generations, who broke away from the official emblematics of being Bahian. This artistic posture, skirting what ideologically turned up and was traditionally recognized by local cultural institutions as “the art of Bahia,” raises the curtain on new readings of the popular universe that showed themselves important for the creation of my aesthetics.

You have been working very much with elements such as meat, sugar, and dendê [palm oil]. Why?

Because they are living materials, organic, they are in constant transformation, and may disclose, in a more direct manner, my “thought-up imagination.” Added to that is all the symbolic meaning of religion, in history and in the everyday life of the people from Bahia. Sugar was the element I used to speak about the crisis of the ancient Portuguese colonial system, a moment in which, to me, the “internal secrets” of Brazilian cultural identity started unveiling. Charque [jerked beef] has varied meanings: it is the main ingredient that guarantees the mystic force of the feijoada of Ogum, a black god, as well as being resistant food, like the flesh on the bodies of our slaves who were branded. Charque speaks of the pain of Northeastern poverty and of hunger. Dendê is the blood, the golden sperm of Eshu, it is the Atlantic, the black uterus that breeds the racial category. It is the sea over which my condors of Atlantic freedom fly.

Dendê is the most recurrent material in your work, like paint, a symbol, body wrapping. Closely connected to the history of blacks in Brazil, does dendê, symbolically, represent the axis of your ethical and aesthetic interests?

As it is such a rich and complex material, in all its physical and symbolic dimensions, it has required special attention. It is a hot material, with a strong and uncontrollable aroma, which impregnates the streets, houses, and temples of Bahia. Dendê is the “vegetable blood” offered to divine beings in a large part of their rituals. I have been trying, with dendê, to denounce the most complex cultural issues of Bahia. I am also fascinated by its color, and I think about Oiticica, Klein, and Rothko, in the revelation of the spiritual sense of color. Dendê is an axis to my ethical and aesthetic concerns, yes. It is the vital liquid, the semen, the blood, and the saliva of the cultural body of Bahia.

You also teach several subjects, among them drawing. How does this experience affect your artistic production?

University is a very appropriate territory for my production, as it brings together, unites many different kinds of knowledge. Apart from that, I am Beuysian, I believe in the teaching power of art as a changing element, and throughout all moments of my artistic trajectory, teaching has followed me. The classroom is a very powerful tool for dialogue, for teaching; research and extension are fundamental for my deeper aesthetic investigation of the plurality of the cultural matrixes of Bahia.

At age eleven, you stated that you were a Communist militant. Is your art a means of militancy?

First Marx then Beuys, so you cannot expect anything else. Is there art without politics? Is there creation without a village, without a yard? This reminds me of the “Lecture on Commitment” by Cage, when he asks: “Is it true that when a murder takes place, each one of us is the murderer? Therefore, shouldn’t we be a little more generous with each other?” I am a member of the utopian crowd who understands art in a broad way—defining art as any kind of being and doing; designating the whole of the social fabric, including politics, as a social sculpture. Artistic action establishes close relations with politics. Even if it does not lead to radical change, it may represent a strategy against the pities of this world.

What is your evaluation of the panorama of visual arts of Bahia today and of the insertion of your work into this scene?

I do not feel comfortable to make that analysis, but, as an active member of the artistic community of Bahia since the 1980s, I can make some comments about the cultural policy sponsored by the state of Bahia in the 1990s, with regard to contemporary art, where I am. First of all, the nonrecognition of this kind of manifestation was observed in political managers. Interventions that follow different creative routes from those traditionally accepted as works of art were systematically neglected by official cultural institutions. With this posture, several talents in this field of art were condemned to ostracism and invisibility, and this was indirectly responsible for the professional disenchantment of several artists. We are currently living a good political cultural moment throughout the state. Finer tuning between the state and the federal government. New ideas, new managers, and that all is spawning great artistic talent that spent a long time in latency. Our self-esteem is rising, and new names stand out on the national and international scene. We have much to do, mainly trying to guarantee sustainability without falling into the greater art market. I think: as we do not have, in visual arts, a strong market as is the case with music, we have greater space left for creativity. My production has always had space, I have a select group of followers who accompany my creation. This is very gratifying, as I think I can open many paths around here with contemporary art. I am little by little entering the market and selling my dendê and my jerked beef. Salvador is also a good showcase to the world. I have been negotiating with international collectors and museums, and have also received invitations to participate in important exhibitions outside the state.

On what are you working now and when and where will it be seen?

I am currently working on three projects, all involving performance and video. The first is part of the series Regresso à pintura baiana, and it is called A chuva de epô, a video installation with three channels that represents dendê rain on a landscape in the city of Salvador, homage to Yves Klein, Oiticica, and Oya. The second project is called Bori, and it is a performance in which we are going to offer food to the heads of several black gods. A work straddling the line between the sacred and the aesthetic. It requires great elaboration in the preparation of several offers to the gods. The third work is a death mass that I plan to promote for Márcia X, with the assistance of members of the afoxé group Filhos de Gandhi. I should present this work here in Salvador, between 2008 and 2009, at a gallery and in museums. I am in the preproduction stages and am also raising funds for the more complex work.