The Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino recovered the black faces of her ancestors from the family album.
She enlarged them, printed them on fabric and sewed the pieces with visible stitches — as her mother taught her — to form small bags that protect those who wear them, according to the Candomblé belief.
Paulino arranged 1,500 of these amulets, called
patuás
, in a mural that 30 years ago opened the doors to the Brazilian art circuit and allowed him to address his recurring theme: the trauma of slavery and the reconstruction of the affections of the millions of people who were moved from Africa to America for more than three centuries.
The exploration that she continued through her work can be seen in an exhibition that opens this Friday at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires, which for the first time dedicates an anthology to a black artist.
Standing in front of the seven-meter-wide mural that is on display until June 10 at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires, Paulino is brief when talking about
Parede da memoria
(1994) because she prefers that viewers come closer to see.
He says that those are repeated photos of 11 of his ancestors, but that there are none of his because his genetics, in some way, are already there.
He also says that the work speaks “of the strength of the community”: “It is my memory, it is that of my family, it is that of black people.
“You can ignore one of these people, but you can’t ignore 1,500 pairs of eyes on you.”
This piece, which Paulino considers the first of his career, shares a room with the last ones, a triptych and a series of paintings of women with bromeliads in their mouths and feet made into roots that transform into mangroves.
Cloth bags printed with portraits of the artist's ancestors.
Valentina Fusco
Between the first work and the last, Paulino, who was born in the outskirts of Sao Paulo 57 years ago and has a doctorate in Visual Arts, develops her practice.
The curators of the exhibition, Andrea Giunta and Igor Simões, chose to show 80 pieces in Buenos Aires, in the most complete exhibition of the artist outside Brazil, and titled the exhibition
Amefricana
, in reference to a concept by the philosopher Lélia Gonzales.
Four of the pieces belong to Malba's private collection.
The selection presents prints by the artist – her specialty –, embroidery, installations, drawings, sculptures and a video.
Recently, to create
Natural History?
(2016), a book made of images transferred onto paper and fabric that reviews the concepts of progress or science, Paulino also began to investigate new possibilities through technology.
The route proposed by the curators does not have thematic cores nor does it advance chronologically, but always revolves around one issue: the black presence in Brazil and the rest of America.
For this, the artist uses personal archives and historical archives, many of which were burned after the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888. However, the curators warn, “this act did not imply the erasure of the past” nor the practice of Paulino, which raises questions about the place of black women in the colonial structure and the functioning of exclusion mechanisms today.
The artist has worked, for example, with images taken by the photographer August Stahl, who in the 19th century was hired by a scientist, Louis Agassis, to demonstrate hierarchies between humans.
For the artist, these photographs allow her to explore “how science was used to justify slavery.”
The archive is central in works such as
Assentamento
(2013).
The installation shows images of a woman cut from side to side and then stitched together without the parts fitting together perfectly.
“The trauma is here, where it does not close.
This is the trauma of Brazil and black people.
These people made themselves new because they did it or died,” says Paulino.
In the room, the noise of the sea sounds, like the one that enslaved people heard from the ships, and there are bonfires with replicas of arms.
View of the 'Amefricana' exhibition.Valentina Fusco
The archive and other resources, such as ribbons, synthetic hair or Portuguese tiles, allow Paulino to also investigate “the subjectivity of black women.”
She did it, for example, in an untitled work from 2006 in which the artist encapsulated fragments of black hair in microscope lenses and assigned them women's names: Dora, Regina, Teresa... Or in Ama de leite (2007)
,
which It presents silhouettes of black women caring for white children on the wall;
Strips of the color of milk come out of their breasts and reach bottles arranged on the floor with the photos of those women inside.
“If you try to see the images on the bottles, you need to bend your knees because they are very low.
It is a way to bow and show that these women were people,” says Paulino and crouches.
“A turning point in the history of Brazilian art”
Igor Simões, curator and specialist in African diaspora, believes that Paulino “is a turning point in the history of Brazilian art”: “If today we see a much greater presence of black artists, curators or researchers, it is because this field, in Brazil has been opened by the production of Rosana Paulino.”
The exhibition that opens this Friday at Malba is part of the path that Paulino enables more than half of the country's population, which is considered black or mixed race.
As a declaration, the artist planted a flag over the Argentine museum, as she had done before at the Rio Art Museum.
It is a blue and red badge with the profile of a black woman printed on it;
From her open mouth come the leaves of a plant and below her shoulders is an inscription:
pretuguês
, a word that refers to the black appropriation of the language, according to curator Andrea Giunta.
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A post shared by Rosana Paulino (@rosanapaulino.oficial)
Simões highlights the relevance of Paulino's drawings being exhibited in the exhibition because “they are the basis of his thinking” and show “the process of sophistication” of his work.
“It is very important that the thought processes of black artists can be shown because for many years the production of black artists has been encapsulated in the idea of spontaneity,” says the curator and invites you to observe the series of drawings he has around insects. in different stages of metamorphosis done in graphite and watercolor.
The drawings gain three-dimensionality in an installation arranged in the same room and called
Telcelãs
(2003), a work populated by clay and thread sculptures that are half woman and half insect.
The figures hang twisted from the wall, in full metamorphosis;
Below, on the floor, they have left their cocoons.
“[The figures] seem to have emerged in the hope of escaping the shackles of the historical forms of black labor in Brazil,” writes Kanitra Fletcher in an essay on Paulino's work.
“They are processes of resistance and hope.
I am interested in transformation,” says the artist, who learned to mold clay with her mother and her sister in the patio of her house, and does not elaborate further: “They are very personal feelings, but they speak of a community.
I prefer that you see them and think about this.”
A recurring theme in Paulino's work is the trauma caused by slavery.Valentina Fusco
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