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Sao Paulo .- The narratives, dialogues and differences between Africa, America and Europe are the protagonists of the five centuries of "Afro-Atlantic Stories", an exhibition that showcases the characters behind human trafficking in the waters of the Black Atlantic
The exhibition brings together a collection of 450 works that present the daily life of these peoples from the point of view of d & rsquo; Artists from different eras, such as Joshua Reynolds, Ellen Gallagher, Paul Cezanne and Candido Portinari, a "timeless" journey through the Sao Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) and the Tomie Ohtake Institute , in the capital of São Paulo.
"We wanted to use the broad, plural, and amplified meaning of the word" story, "which may include the official story and personal stories, narrations, memories, and literary fictions," explains L & # 39; one of the curators of the exhibition, Tomás Toledo, in an interview with Efe
. With the celebration of the 130th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Brazil, it recovers the key role of this country as "central territory" in Afro-Atlantic stories, since 46% of the 11 million blacks have landed by force in The New Continent was transferred to the Portuguese colony of that time, complete Toledo.
After the abolition, he adds, "a process of social integration has not been developed", so the "structures of a racist state, of a state based in slavery thought "they resist up to today in the South American giant.
And it's through a wide range of compositions, such as paintings, sculptures, photos, montages and videos, that the "Afro-Atlantic Stories" role shine through, through symbolic but powerful elements, traces of slavery in the world.
This is the case of the "Study for Portrait of Oppression" picture, in which Benny Andrews portrays the burden of a black child in front of the pain inflicted by the chains that take away his freedom.
Already the portrait "White Shoe", through the lens of Bauer de Sá, highlights the criticism of "institutionalized racism" by photographing a black man with an elegant white shoe on his head, in a hint at the oppression that plagues the black community until today. But it's not just the tyranny and repression that are in the "Afro-Atlantic stories".
The incursions into the Black Atlantic, a concept created by the historian Paul Gilroy and who established this ocean as a new "continent" bridge between Africa and the Americas, has brought much more than work in the United States.
"With this process of human trafficking on the part of the Europeans, they have not only charged the labor force, but also African culture, religions, orishas" are now part of the world. 39, identity of countries like Brazil, Colombia or Cuba, "says the Commissioner.
Thus, many of the 214 artists who make up the show were inspired by the confluence of mutual exchange of cultures between Africans, Americans and Europeans to convey the spirit that prevailed at that time.
"We can see the rich, powerful and powerful influences and presence of African culture not only in Brazilian culture, but also in neighboring countries such as Colombia, the Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica and the southern United States ", adds Toledo
one of the artists who immortalized these festive African" rites and rhythms "on the American territory were the Dutch Dirk Valkenburg, who depicted in one of his watercolors a "slave ritual in a sugar plantation in Suriname," in 1706.
"Rites and Rhythms" is one of the eight main nuclei in which the exhibition is divided, to which join the sessions "Cards and Margins", "Cotidianos", "Portraits", "Afro-Atlantic Modernisms", "Roads and Trances", "Emancipations" and "Activism and Resistance."
These eight central themes, Toledo emphasizes, also aim to present a new perspective on Brazilian "official history" and to broaden the "monolithic and solidified vision". about the end of slavery in the country. "We must look at the history of the abolition of a less paternalistic, less white perspective.We must make it more complex, give and include the voices of those who live the reality of what it is. It is only to be black in Brazil, "he concludes.
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