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36TH PANORAMA of BRAZILIAN ART Sertão Is a Word of Unknown Origin

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36TH PANORAMA of BRAZILIAN ART Sertão Is a Word of Unknown Origin 36TH PANORAMA OF BRAZILIAN ART Sertão is a word of unknown origin. In the Portuguese language, ANA LIRA records of its existence date back to the 15th century. When the Caruaru, PE, 1977. Lives in Recife, PE. colonizers landed here, they brought the term with them, using it to designate the vast territory of the inlands, which was imperceptible I present in Sertão a work that peculiarities, provides a balanced from the coast. Since then, various meanings have been assigned offers a synthesis of more life. The image of these places to this word, without ever fixing on a settled idea. It is formed of than fifteen years’ experience built by the drought industry oppositions: it can refer to the forest and to open land, to the desert of living with farmers and made the rest of Brazil believe and to settlements, to that which is close and that which is remote. agriculturists who inhabit the that the semiarid was a place of It describes the visible and the unknown, aridity and the fertility, the Brazilian semiarid region. I did impotence, of a people who didn’t uncultured and the cultivated. Although this term came to Brazil in a an internship at Centro Sabiá, know how to make decisions and caravel ship, this did not stop sertão from rising up against colonialism a pioneering agroecology required the protection of the and escaping its intentions. It preserves its power of invention. It does organization in Pernambuco, state. These choices undermine not surrender to the monopolies of patriarchal knowledge. It demands founded with Jones Severino the constructive power of new social pacts. It de-hierarchizes its relationship with nature, reveres Pereira. I followed various regeneration that the semiarid mystery, and celebrates. projects with the Articulação region possesses. Drought is not In the light of a certain production of Brazilian art, Sertão is do Semiárido Brasileiro – ASA a problem to be combated; it is a a way of thinking and acting. An evocative term, it carries with it [Brazilian Semiarid Coordination] natural phenomenon, like snow. transformative affects, political forms, ideals of creation, memories of and the Articulação Nacional de If you work with ecosystems struggle, rituals of healing, and fictions of the future. This sertão-art Agroecologia – ANA [National respectfully, cycles occur without which is presented here is found in the fluidity of languages. More than Coordination of Agroecology]. sacrificing the lives of people, a place, sertão is a crossing. It spreads throughout Brazil; it is in the I would join them at meetings animals, and species. I am working of the small holding, it prevails in the alleys of the favela; it and documenting processes, proposing an artist’s book which descends along the riverbed; it is written on the walls of the city and but then I would come back alone is a channel of interlocution and present in the reclaimed land. to visit the communities and transmission of an experience At the 36th Panorama of Brazilian Art, twenty-nine artists and continue photographing them. which I believe in and that makes collectives are gathered together to share strategies of resistance and The experience of agroecology me see the Northeast, the Sertão, models of experimentation, based on their stories. If, by definition, in the semiarid reveals a and the semiarid region, in all its the sertão is at the limit of what can be apprehended, the notion system which, if you respect its vibrant power. of panorama is complementary in the form of its contradiction. The importance of bringing together these elements and embracing these oppositions, however, is due to the ever-increasing need to defend non-hegemonic existences and to share other ways of life. Mandalla, 2012–2019 As long as art can assert its sertão condition, there will always be Artist’s book 30 × 30 cm struggle, there will always be difference, there will always be the new. Artist’s collection Júlia Rebouças [curator] ANA PI ANA VAZ Belo Horizonte, MG, 1986. Lives in Paris. Brasília, DF, 1986. Lives between Paris and Lisbon. NoirBLUE – deslocamentos de category of “Black Dance,” in the Atomic Garden (2018) is my first combine the two images as uma dança [NoirBLUE–dance context of such a vast continent film in Japan, part of a long two layers of the same vibrant displacements, 2018] is a dream. and an even larger diaspora, is project, The Voyage Out, which image. Atomic Garden, through I get quite emotional because incapable of doing justice to this is a speculative fiction that arose its stroboscopic vision of it’s a work that has given me complexity. So, starting with this from two events: the nuclear the world, seeks to explode much more than I expected. expression “a very black blue,” accident in Fukushima, in March and expand the relationships It’s a documentary film that which is used to denigrate black 2011, and the birth of a new between nature and artifice, extrapolates the issue of time people, people of color, I decided island in the Pacific, in southern atomization and recomposition, and enables the spaces of the to create a blue dance, with a Japan, a year and a half after the contamination and resistance. diaspora and Africa, imaginary stage play and a film, which is accident. The work was made It is a technological, nonhuman, places strategically diminished by like a making-of. It is an object on two 16 mm reels and filmed in supernatural vision. It means a the colonial project, to dialogue that speaks for itself. I like to a single trip, without any pre- lot to come to Brazil with a film through dance, a completely reframe the discourse, using script, based only on encounters made in the Far East, especially subjective object fully shared other terms, to take words that and intuitions. After the film was in Fukushima, a place so far away with people who identify as black, have been used to propagate developed, these three minutes for us, and find another Sertão, in the African diaspora. I visited violence against bodies like mine. of flowers appeared next to without boundaries, without nine capitals in Africa: Niamey, Or bodies that are in the same three minutes of fireworks. There limits, condemned to be an end Ouagadougou, Bamako, Lagos, struggle as mine, for the sake of seemed to be a very close—if and a beginning of the world. In Nouakchott, Malabo, Abidjan, balance on this planet Earth. not metamorphic—relationship Fukushima, from within a possibly Luanda, Addis. I realized that the between these fireworks and toxic land, other roots, other life the flowers, so I decided to forms and worlds sprout. NoirBLUE – deslocamentos de uma dança, 2018 Atomic Garden, 2018 Video installation, 27’ 16 mm transferred to HD, stereo, 8’ Artist’s collection Artist’s collection / Produced by Spectre Productions ANTONIO OBÁ COLETIVO FULNI-Ô DE CINEMA Ceilândia, DF, 1983. Lives in Brasília, DF. Águas Belas, PE, 2013. Based in Fulni-ô Indian Village, Águas Belas, PE. For Sertão, I present an oil how this historical inheritance Our first work was YOONAHLE – taking palm to give to his cattle, painting, in which I create an is present in the mestizo, A palavra dos Fulni-ô in the northeastern semiarid allegory with the idea of the black physical body and in the [YOONAHLE – The word of the region, during the drought, motherland. I use the image of relationships that unfold in the Fulni-ô, 2013]. Yoonahle means: and assumes this is a “typical a black woman with her breasts symbolic body of social relations. “Now, it’s us,” which is actually northeastern” film. Except that exposed to suggest the nourishing What it means, then, is to reflect the word of the Fulni-ô. Our this is the tough northeastern of two “children,” so to speak, on this black body which is people are one of those who Indian, who lives in the sertão, that are lions (or the specter of mine, and that of my relatives have managed to preserve the who has suffered massacres such). It is some way from the and ancestors in the fields of Yaathe language. It is a privilege and cultural imposition by non- sanitized figure of the “gentle action of micro and macro power. for us, but we do not actually Indians. The work expresses all mother.” I first counterpoint Apart from this I also present consider it a point of pride, since, this resistance amid the traces the figure of a fierce mother three drawings that mention unfortunately, other peoples have left by colonial history. We resist who, with milk and blood (the the term “settlement,” within lost their native languages. Águas time; the sertão is symbolic to mark of a history of sacrifices some Yorubá traditions, mostly Belas, where we live, was erected our people; the knowledge of this and bloody events), feeds her the Candomblé [Afro-brazilian on top of our indigenous village. place comes from our ancestors. offspring but does not represent religion], they reference an aspect They massacred our ancestors. For many people, the sertão does herself as a victim, and finds in of connection and recognition It was a process of aggression, of not mean anything, but for us, this vivid memory strength and between the terrain and the cultural imposition, in which many who live here, it has everything courage to resist. The work ends metaphysical, processes of were catechized, exterminated, to do with our lives and with our up provoking thoughts about renovation. and lost their languages. In the very existence. film, the spectator sees this man Mama, 2019 Figura assentada II, 2019 Oil and gold foil on canvas Acrylic and charcoal on paper YOONAHLE – A palavra dos 150 × 100 cm 32 × 24 cm Fulni-ô, 2013 Courtesy Mendes Wood DM, São Courtesy of Mendes Wood DM, São Video, 45’ Paulo / New York / Brussels Paulo / New York / Brussels Collective’s collection Figura assentada I, 2019 Figura assentada III, 2019 Acrylic and charcoal on paper Acrylic and charcoal on paper 32 × 24 cm 32 × 24 cm Courtesy of Mendes Wood DM, São Courtesy of Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo / New York / Brussels Paulo / New York / Brussels CRISTIANO LENHARDT DALTON PAULA Itaara, RS, 1975.
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