[Redemoinho uma tradi(c)ção-Exu na] história da arte brasileira

Abstract

This Ph.D. dissertation consists of two main points of investigation that seeks to answer the questions: what is the role of visual arts in the construction of identities and the representation of racial relations? How can I understand and signify the historical gaps, that have produced and still produce hierarchical relationships based on skin colour, through art? How can I write about the past and ancestry in an Afrocentric narrative of art? The first point is the Èṣù-Translation, created by professors André Capilé and Guilherme Gontijo. Èṣù-Translation consists of a mode of interpretation applied throughout the work as an Afrocentered reading of the history of art in Brazil. It is a translation from colonial to decolonial. I proposed an analysis of paintings, lithography, watercolours produced in the 19th and early 20th century, created mostly by European travelers, such as Jean-Baptiste Debret, Johann Rugendas, and Carlos Julião, contrasting their work with contemporary artworks created by AfricanBrazilian artists, such as Clebson Francisco, Gê Viana, Tassila Custodes, among others. It is a counterpoint between a Eurocentric/colonial reading of the world with an Èṣù/decolonial reading of the world. As the popular oríkì says: “Èṣù killed the bird today with the stone he threw yesterday.” Èṣù is the Yoruban deity, with their multiple forms around the African and the American continent, that guards the crossroads. Their episteme symbolizes encounters, transitions, and passages in multiple crossing possibilities, which offers an opportunity to escape the Western discourse of dualisms that repeatedly prescribes oppositions such as masculine/feminine, civilized/primitive, white/coloured, as a way to understand the world around us. The second point is the use of language. The languages of the different peoples from Africa that were kidnapped to Brazil did not escape dismantling. In addition to destroying the main instrument of human, social and cultural communication, the colonizers imposed the Portuguese language on the entire colony. However, despite the ruthless command of the Portuguese language, the African languages did not disappear completely, maintaining their existence and influence through Portuguese itself. According to Lélia Gonzalez, Brazil is Africanized and “Pretuguês” (black Portuguese) is the creolization of the language, that is, the mixture of the colonizer's language with several languages of dominated groups, with emphasis on the different African peoples that make up the Brazilian population. “Pretuguês” is the orality that allowed the persistence of history through spoken language. It is the attempt to remove from oblivion the expressions and the manifestations of the diversity that should compose the Brazilian totality. In addition, to write in “Pretuguês”, reclaiming the knowledge present in the oral tradition, the writing process includes also studying and experimenting with, as Gates Jr. posits, the cousin of Esu-Elegbara, the Signifyin’ Monkey, and its Afro-American rhetorical strategy. As professor Geri Augusto once said: “language cannot separate us.” The dissertation is a decolonial work of rethinking Brazilian Art History through poetry and translation.