“Negros Indícios: performance video photography”, curated by art historian Roberto Conduru, presented a total of 12 artists – a significant sampling, but not truly representative of the diversity of the black performance art scene in Brazil.
Pregando a palavra, 2017, Moisés Patrício. Negros Indícios Exhibition, Caixa Cultural, São Paulo. Photo: Barbara Cunha
Parallel to the exhibition, which took place from October to December 2017, a cycle of five performance pieces was featured and a printed bilingual Portuguese/English catalog was published, with texts by the curator and artists, as well as a list of recommended reading on the topic. The range of activities tackled in Negros Indícios is important, as it helps to outline the presence of black artists in the contemporary visual arts by documenting them.
The exhibition arises in a cultural environment that, for approximately the last five years, has witnessed the emergence of several artists interested in exploring the potential of performance art, (re)acting to what is socially imposed in a structurally racist society. Their work gives rise to discussions, ranging from allegations of racism, more present in some than others, to the lyrical use of colors, such as red in Musa Michelle Mattiuzzi’s Experimentando o vermelho em dilúvio, 2013, and Caetano Dias’s Rio Doce, 2016, or white in Dalton Paula’s A notícia, 2013.
Laços, 2017, Priscila Rezende. Negros Indícios Exhibition, Caixa Cultural, São Paulo. Photo: Barbara Cunha
Mindful about presenting a certain outline of Brazil’s national territory, in which this “black presence” has arisen, the exhibition is comprised of works by Ayrson Heráclito, Caetano Dias, Rommulo Vieira Conceição, Tiago Sant’Ana, from Bahia; Antonio Obá and Dalton Paula, from Brasília; Priscila Rezende and Rubiane Maia, from Minas Gerais; Musa Michelle Mattiuzzi, Moisés Patrício, Renata Felinto, from São Paulo; and, finally, João Manuel Feliciano, from Pernambuco. This regional breakdown holds other meanings, if we look at themes like hair, in the pieces by Feliciano, Felinto, Sant’Ana and Rezende, or at the act of posing and dancing in natural or socially constructed spaces in the pieces by Conceição, Dias, Felinto, Maia. Another theme is the relationship between ritual acts and memory, which appears in Heráclito, Obá, Patricio, Sant’Ana and Felinto.
Brunch para Exu, 2013, Renata Felinto. Negros Indícios Exhibition, Caixa Cultural, São Paulo. Photo: Marina Arruda
The artists’ diverse backgrounds speaks volumes about where the exhibition was held, São Paulo’s Caixa Cultural in the central square, Praça da Sé, and about the city itself, populated by migrants from different parts of the country who pass through this ground zero of urban memory.
Corpo em quadrado P, 2012, Dalton Paula. Exposição Negros Indícios, Caixa Cultural, São Paulo. Photo: Heloá Fernandes
It is interesting to note how two pieces by Renata Felinto, which discuss otherness, are performed either partially or completely in this square: Brunch para Exu, 2013, and Danço na terra em que piso, 2013. This relationship between the body, space and the production of meaning appears in a piece by Rommulo Vieira Conceição: O espaço se torna lugar na medida em que eu me familiarizo com ele (2015/2017).
Interior of Negros Indícios Exhibition, Caixa Cultural, São Paulo, 2017. Photo: Barbara Cunha
Although Negros indícios brought together a group of works and artists relevant to the (re)dimensioning of the black performance art scene and its relationship with photography and video, the exhibition presented a few problems, the main one being the design of the exibition that, to some extent, reinforced the relationship between black artistic production and social precarity. As a concrete element among so much digital content, the design of the exhibition interfered with the enjoyment of the work. Another aspect worth questioning is the editing of a wide range of digital works, exhibited in three rooms, which confuse recorded performance with photo-performance and video-performance, creating a blurred line between these areas. But in spite of these, Negros Indícios has made an important contribution to the promotion of the black art scene in the intersecting fields of performance art, video and photography which, when placed together, suggest just how powerful it was as a curatorial experiment.
Alexandre Araujo Bispo is an anthropologist, critic, independent curator and educator.
Translated from Portuguese by Zoë Perry
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