“[…] Vermelho’s façade features Contrafachada designed by Tiago Guimarães. Definitely the longest wall expanse in the gallery, the front of the building incorporates six wooden batten structures that present its backside. An architectural gesture of almost simple assertiveness: maintaining that there is no neutrality, even in the design of the container, the habitat or the combat tank; everything has its reverse and its bottom. Every hidden version a counter version. Inversion, contravention and vice versa.
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Installation made with wooden battens under existing architecture
Photo Filipe Berndt
A fachada da Vermelho apresenta uma Contrafachada, projetada por Tiago Guimarães. Literalmente a maior extensão de parede da galeria, a face frontal do edifício incorpora seis estruturas de sarrafos de madeira que apresentam seu avesso. Gesto arquitetônico de uma assertividade quase singela: sustentar que não há neutralidade, até mesmo no desenho do contêiner, habitat ou tanque de guerra; tudo tem um avesso e um fundo. Toda versão oculta, uma contraversão. Inversão, contravenção e vice-versa.
Trecho de No Fim da Madrugada, de Lisette Lagnado
A fachada da Vermelho apresenta uma Contrafachada, projetada por Tiago Guimarães. Literalmente a maior extensão de parede da galeria, a face frontal do edifício incorpora seis estruturas de sarrafos de madeira que apresentam seu avesso. Gesto arquitetônico de uma assertividade quase singela: sustentar que não há neutralidade, até mesmo no desenho do contêiner, habitat ou tanque de guerra; tudo tem um avesso e um fundo. Toda versão oculta, uma contraversão. Inversão, contravenção e vice-versa.
Trecho de No Fim da Madrugada, de Lisette Lagnado
Installation made with wooden battens under existing architecture
Photo Filipe Berndt
A fachada da Vermelho apresenta uma Contrafachada, projetada por Tiago Guimarães. Literalmente a maior extensão de parede da galeria, a face frontal do edifício incorpora seis estruturas de sarrafos de madeira que apresentam seu avesso. Gesto arquitetônico de uma assertividade quase singela: sustentar que não há neutralidade, até mesmo no desenho do contêiner, habitat ou tanque de guerra; tudo tem um avesso e um fundo. Toda versão oculta, uma contraversão. Inversão, contravenção e vice-versa.
Trecho de No Fim da Madrugada, de Lisette Lagnado
A fachada da Vermelho apresenta uma Contrafachada, projetada por Tiago Guimarães. Literalmente a maior extensão de parede da galeria, a face frontal do edifício incorpora seis estruturas de sarrafos de madeira que apresentam seu avesso. Gesto arquitetônico de uma assertividade quase singela: sustentar que não há neutralidade, até mesmo no desenho do contêiner, habitat ou tanque de guerra; tudo tem um avesso e um fundo. Toda versão oculta, uma contraversão. Inversão, contravenção e vice-versa.
Trecho de No Fim da Madrugada, de Lisette Lagnado
Photo Filipe Berndt
Single channel video, color, sound
Creation and direction: Rosângela Rennó
Director’s assistant: Marilá Dardot
Editing: Fernanda Bastos
Sound: Ivan Capeller
Photo still video
“[…] In this work of resignification, Pero Vaz de Caminha’s letter to His Highness The King of Portugal, in which he reported having “found” an expanse of inhabited land in 1500, becomes itself a record of extractivism and the gold rush in Brazil. The absence of iconographic documents on the invasion hence became Rosângela Rennó’s pretext for inventing the dialogues of her 2000 film Vera Cruz. According to the artist, the “old, scratched and worn-out image on the film” reinforces the gap between photographic documentation and fiction.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
–
Only three textual accounts of Pedro Alváres Cabral’s great undertaking have survived the 500 or so years that have passed since the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese. The most complete is the letter signed by Pero Vaz de Caminha and addressed to King D. Manuel I of Portugal, informing precisely of the discovery of a new Eden.
The famous document frustrates our senses because, despite the wealth of details about the ten days spent by its author, among Portuguese captains and sailors, on the coast of Ilha de Vera Cruz, it is based solely on the discoverer’s perception. We lack, of course, the response and reaction of the ‘others’ — those Edenic human beings, so different from the European conqueror. Dialogue between the Portuguese and the native Amerindians was impossible, for obvious reasons: the language barrier. The letter suggests the development of a bodily dialogue —an action that is difficult to transcribe verbatim, no matter how detailed it is— and it is up to the reader to imagine this dialogue, and use it as support for the absence of spoken dialogue.
So many impossibilities could only engender a work that is based on impossibilities and transcendences: a crossing that is more temporal than spatial and geographical. The impossible dialogue between the Portuguese and the natives finds its double in a remnant of image and sound that constituted the ‘testimony’ of that moment. It is as if some spectator of that episode, aware of so much impossibility, had recorded something beyond the textual account. What is transcendent (and magical…) is that it seems that this record, recorded on film, time was unable to completely erase.
VERA CRUZ is, therefore, a video copy of an (im)possible film that oscillates between documentary and fiction genres, about the moment of the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese, as reported in Caminha’s letter. From the removed image we can only see the image of the film, old, scratched, worn out by hundreds of years of existence and excessive use. The sound of the words was also removed, as the dialogue itself, between the discoverer and the native, did not take place. All that remained were the sound of the sea and the wind — witnesses to what happened — and the story transformed into a caption text, now available in five versions: Portuguese, English, French, Spanish and Cyrillic.
Coincidentally, if the origin of the work is based on the solitary resistance of subtitles — the exchange of the image for its textual version — the fate of what remains of this documentary/fiction also seems to reside in translation, into as many languages as possible. The confrontation between them proposes a very peculiar and curiously didactic semantic situation: more and new (im)possible dialogues, ad infinitum, that make us reflect on the precariousness of media and perception and, above all, on the fragility of human relationships.
Rosângela Rennó, 2000 – 2011
“[…] In this work of resignification, Pero Vaz de Caminha’s letter to His Highness The King of Portugal, in which he reported having “found” an expanse of inhabited land in 1500, becomes itself a record of extractivism and the gold rush in Brazil. The absence of iconographic documents on the invasion hence became Rosângela Rennó’s pretext for inventing the dialogues of her 2000 film Vera Cruz. According to the artist, the “old, scratched and worn-out image on the film” reinforces the gap between photographic documentation and fiction.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
–
Only three textual accounts of Pedro Alváres Cabral’s great undertaking have survived the 500 or so years that have passed since the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese. The most complete is the letter signed by Pero Vaz de Caminha and addressed to King D. Manuel I of Portugal, informing precisely of the discovery of a new Eden.
The famous document frustrates our senses because, despite the wealth of details about the ten days spent by its author, among Portuguese captains and sailors, on the coast of Ilha de Vera Cruz, it is based solely on the discoverer’s perception. We lack, of course, the response and reaction of the ‘others’ — those Edenic human beings, so different from the European conqueror. Dialogue between the Portuguese and the native Amerindians was impossible, for obvious reasons: the language barrier. The letter suggests the development of a bodily dialogue —an action that is difficult to transcribe verbatim, no matter how detailed it is— and it is up to the reader to imagine this dialogue, and use it as support for the absence of spoken dialogue.
So many impossibilities could only engender a work that is based on impossibilities and transcendences: a crossing that is more temporal than spatial and geographical. The impossible dialogue between the Portuguese and the natives finds its double in a remnant of image and sound that constituted the ‘testimony’ of that moment. It is as if some spectator of that episode, aware of so much impossibility, had recorded something beyond the textual account. What is transcendent (and magical…) is that it seems that this record, recorded on film, time was unable to completely erase.
VERA CRUZ is, therefore, a video copy of an (im)possible film that oscillates between documentary and fiction genres, about the moment of the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese, as reported in Caminha’s letter. From the removed image we can only see the image of the film, old, scratched, worn out by hundreds of years of existence and excessive use. The sound of the words was also removed, as the dialogue itself, between the discoverer and the native, did not take place. All that remained were the sound of the sea and the wind — witnesses to what happened — and the story transformed into a caption text, now available in five versions: Portuguese, English, French, Spanish and Cyrillic.
Coincidentally, if the origin of the work is based on the solitary resistance of subtitles — the exchange of the image for its textual version — the fate of what remains of this documentary/fiction also seems to reside in translation, into as many languages as possible. The confrontation between them proposes a very peculiar and curiously didactic semantic situation: more and new (im)possible dialogues, ad infinitum, that make us reflect on the precariousness of media and perception and, above all, on the fragility of human relationships.
Rosângela Rennó, 2000 – 2011
With Lisette Lagnado e Marcos Gallon
Photo Filipe Berndt
Photo Filipe Berndt
Oil on canvas
“’My people’, says Carmézia Emiliano, a Macuxi artist whose people have always known that nature has inherent rights. It is the title of a painting, in which more than two-thirds of the canvas is filled by a flutter of butterflies bursting from the earth’s humus and flying over the narrow strip of a village. The question remains: what can we learn from her notion of ‘people’, which embraces living beings and biomes?”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“’My people’, says Carmézia Emiliano, a Macuxi artist whose people have always known that nature has inherent rights. It is the title of a painting, in which more than two-thirds of the canvas is filled by a flutter of butterflies bursting from the earth’s humus and flying over the narrow strip of a village. The question remains: what can we learn from her notion of ‘people’, which embraces living beings and biomes?”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Photo Filipe Berndt
Pyrograph on raw cotton
Photo Filipe Berndt
“The end of daybreak is about time awareness, but also a figure of speech. As a metaphor, it evokes whatever comes after collusions under cover of darkness, and it embraces waves of indignation and anger. Among countless examples of manipulation and intrigue, one can mention the burning of the archives on slavery, under the responsibility of Minister of Finance Ruy Barbosa, on May 13, 1891. I nourished the winds, I unlaced the monsters — persistent denunciations by social movement activists are finally making Brazil confront institutions founded upon structural racism.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
–
“This work displays with fire marks the date of the burning of the slavery archives ordered by Ruy Barbosa, a historical fact that makes it difficult to recover an important part of black people’s history in Brazil by those who seek to uncover the trajectory of their ancestors”
André Vargas
“The end of daybreak is about time awareness, but also a figure of speech. As a metaphor, it evokes whatever comes after collusions under cover of darkness, and it embraces waves of indignation and anger. Among countless examples of manipulation and intrigue, one can mention the burning of the archives on slavery, under the responsibility of Minister of Finance Ruy Barbosa, on May 13, 1891. I nourished the winds, I unlaced the monsters — persistent denunciations by social movement activists are finally making Brazil confront institutions founded upon structural racism.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
–
“This work displays with fire marks the date of the burning of the slavery archives ordered by Ruy Barbosa, a historical fact that makes it difficult to recover an important part of black people’s history in Brazil by those who seek to uncover the trajectory of their ancestors”
André Vargas
Stolen ferns and catalog cards
Photo Filipe Berndt
“Archives and documents on coloniality must have their categories reconfigured if we want to surmise hypotheses and produce reversals of meaning. Artist and educator bruno o., an active member of Acervo Bajubá, a “project recording memories of Brazilian LGBT+ communities”, chose to highlight the story of Marcos Puga, “a transvestite and plant thief”. The work on display is part of an ongoing investigation on cataloging, documentation, and archive reorganization practices. Bruno considers other types of testimonies, recognition and activation of memories, places and bodies involved in gathering situated knowledge. He explains that “Marcos Puga’s case questions the reproduction of the epistemicide colonial operations responsible for the indexation of life within monolithic orders”. What was it like, under the Brazilian civilian-military dictatorship, to tell the story of a person whose only remains are material fragments… and rumors?
In his search for information, bruno o. located a niece of Marcos Puga’s, who defended him when he was illegally arrested and tortured in 2001 after an anonymous tip. She says Marcos had been a baby left on her grandmother’s doorstep. A kind and beloved child, he found family care and, in turn, cared for his adoptive aunts and grandparents. His niece does not remember much about the fern thefts; she thinks it is a lie. She says that she knew he performed in a nightclub, but never saw anything, not even a wig; he probably left everything somewhere else. She only knows that he shaved his body. Marcos disappeared in 2002, and she was contacted years later by a São Bernardo do Campo police team who had found human remains they supposed were his — since he had been adopted, no identification was possible.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“Archives and documents on coloniality must have their categories reconfigured if we want to surmise hypotheses and produce reversals of meaning. Artist and educator bruno o., an active member of Acervo Bajubá, a “project recording memories of Brazilian LGBT+ communities”, chose to highlight the story of Marcos Puga, “a transvestite and plant thief”. The work on display is part of an ongoing investigation on cataloging, documentation, and archive reorganization practices. Bruno considers other types of testimonies, recognition and activation of memories, places and bodies involved in gathering situated knowledge. He explains that “Marcos Puga’s case questions the reproduction of the epistemicide colonial operations responsible for the indexation of life within monolithic orders”. What was it like, under the Brazilian civilian-military dictatorship, to tell the story of a person whose only remains are material fragments… and rumors?
In his search for information, bruno o. located a niece of Marcos Puga’s, who defended him when he was illegally arrested and tortured in 2001 after an anonymous tip. She says Marcos had been a baby left on her grandmother’s doorstep. A kind and beloved child, he found family care and, in turn, cared for his adoptive aunts and grandparents. His niece does not remember much about the fern thefts; she thinks it is a lie. She says that she knew he performed in a nightclub, but never saw anything, not even a wig; he probably left everything somewhere else. She only knows that he shaved his body. Marcos disappeared in 2002, and she was contacted years later by a São Bernardo do Campo police team who had found human remains they supposed were his — since he had been adopted, no identification was possible.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Stolen ferns and catalog cards
Photo Filipe Berndt
“Archives and documents on coloniality must have their categories reconfigured if we want to surmise hypotheses and produce reversals of meaning. Artist and educator bruno o., an active member of Acervo Bajubá, a “project recording memories of Brazilian LGBT+ communities”, chose to highlight the story of Marcos Puga, “a transvestite and plant thief”. The work on display is part of an ongoing investigation on cataloging, documentation, and archive reorganization practices. Bruno considers other types of testimonies, recognition and activation of memories, places and bodies involved in gathering situated knowledge. He explains that “Marcos Puga’s case questions the reproduction of the epistemicide colonial operations responsible for the indexation of life within monolithic orders”. What was it like, under the Brazilian civilian-military dictatorship, to tell the story of a person whose only remains are material fragments… and rumors?
In his search for information, bruno o. located a niece of Marcos Puga’s, who defended him when he was illegally arrested and tortured in 2001 after an anonymous tip. She says Marcos had been a baby left on her grandmother’s doorstep. A kind and beloved child, he found family care and, in turn, cared for his adoptive aunts and grandparents. His niece does not remember much about the fern thefts; she thinks it is a lie. She says that she knew he performed in a nightclub, but never saw anything, not even a wig; he probably left everything somewhere else. She only knows that he shaved his body. Marcos disappeared in 2002, and she was contacted years later by a São Bernardo do Campo police team who had found human remains they supposed were his — since he had been adopted, no identification was possible.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“Archives and documents on coloniality must have their categories reconfigured if we want to surmise hypotheses and produce reversals of meaning. Artist and educator bruno o., an active member of Acervo Bajubá, a “project recording memories of Brazilian LGBT+ communities”, chose to highlight the story of Marcos Puga, “a transvestite and plant thief”. The work on display is part of an ongoing investigation on cataloging, documentation, and archive reorganization practices. Bruno considers other types of testimonies, recognition and activation of memories, places and bodies involved in gathering situated knowledge. He explains that “Marcos Puga’s case questions the reproduction of the epistemicide colonial operations responsible for the indexation of life within monolithic orders”. What was it like, under the Brazilian civilian-military dictatorship, to tell the story of a person whose only remains are material fragments… and rumors?
In his search for information, bruno o. located a niece of Marcos Puga’s, who defended him when he was illegally arrested and tortured in 2001 after an anonymous tip. She says Marcos had been a baby left on her grandmother’s doorstep. A kind and beloved child, he found family care and, in turn, cared for his adoptive aunts and grandparents. His niece does not remember much about the fern thefts; she thinks it is a lie. She says that she knew he performed in a nightclub, but never saw anything, not even a wig; he probably left everything somewhere else. She only knows that he shaved his body. Marcos disappeared in 2002, and she was contacted years later by a São Bernardo do Campo police team who had found human remains they supposed were his — since he had been adopted, no identification was possible.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Stolen ferns and catalog cards
Photo Filipe Berndt
“Archives and documents on coloniality must have their categories reconfigured if we want to surmise hypotheses and produce reversals of meaning. Artist and educator bruno o., an active member of Acervo Bajubá, a “project recording memories of Brazilian LGBT+ communities”, chose to highlight the story of Marcos Puga, “a transvestite and plant thief”. The work on display is part of an ongoing investigation on cataloging, documentation, and archive reorganization practices. Bruno considers other types of testimonies, recognition and activation of memories, places and bodies involved in gathering situated knowledge. He explains that “Marcos Puga’s case questions the reproduction of the epistemicide colonial operations responsible for the indexation of life within monolithic orders”. What was it like, under the Brazilian civilian-military dictatorship, to tell the story of a person whose only remains are material fragments… and rumors?
In his search for information, bruno o. located a niece of Marcos Puga’s, who defended him when he was illegally arrested and tortured in 2001 after an anonymous tip. She says Marcos had been a baby left on her grandmother’s doorstep. A kind and beloved child, he found family care and, in turn, cared for his adoptive aunts and grandparents. His niece does not remember much about the fern thefts; she thinks it is a lie. She says that she knew he performed in a nightclub, but never saw anything, not even a wig; he probably left everything somewhere else. She only knows that he shaved his body. Marcos disappeared in 2002, and she was contacted years later by a São Bernardo do Campo police team who had found human remains they supposed were his — since he had been adopted, no identification was possible.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“Archives and documents on coloniality must have their categories reconfigured if we want to surmise hypotheses and produce reversals of meaning. Artist and educator bruno o., an active member of Acervo Bajubá, a “project recording memories of Brazilian LGBT+ communities”, chose to highlight the story of Marcos Puga, “a transvestite and plant thief”. The work on display is part of an ongoing investigation on cataloging, documentation, and archive reorganization practices. Bruno considers other types of testimonies, recognition and activation of memories, places and bodies involved in gathering situated knowledge. He explains that “Marcos Puga’s case questions the reproduction of the epistemicide colonial operations responsible for the indexation of life within monolithic orders”. What was it like, under the Brazilian civilian-military dictatorship, to tell the story of a person whose only remains are material fragments… and rumors?
In his search for information, bruno o. located a niece of Marcos Puga’s, who defended him when he was illegally arrested and tortured in 2001 after an anonymous tip. She says Marcos had been a baby left on her grandmother’s doorstep. A kind and beloved child, he found family care and, in turn, cared for his adoptive aunts and grandparents. His niece does not remember much about the fern thefts; she thinks it is a lie. She says that she knew he performed in a nightclub, but never saw anything, not even a wig; he probably left everything somewhere else. She only knows that he shaved his body. Marcos disappeared in 2002, and she was contacted years later by a São Bernardo do Campo police team who had found human remains they supposed were his — since he had been adopted, no identification was possible.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Photo Filipe Berndt
printing with mineral pigment ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper 315 gr
Photo Filipe Berndt
“There is no denying that images can mobilize public opinion and awaken it from torpor, indifference or ignorance. In the drawn-out demarcation process of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the release of Claudia Andujar and Carlo Zacquini’s photographs played a fundamental role in raising awareness. Despite this historic achievement, however, ongoing invasion waves by miners and businessmen in search of gold and cassiterite, with the direct or indirect support of the State and the Armed Forces, keep causing social and environmental disasters due to contamination by mercury and other pollutants. In the Vermelho exhibition, we decided not to expose the victims and to highlight the seductive aesthetics of imperialism. The language of the gold rush assimilates typical codes of touristic ads, with their (western movie!) chromatic scales and typography filled with subliminal messages. While Andujar’s Metais Ltda. [Metals LLC] (1989) assembles a set of travel agency posters of Amazon charter flights, the scenes recorded by Zacquini are self-explanatory: in the heart of the Indigenous territory, you can see a tent belonging to the gold mining company and the helicopter runway. A photographer who has been a Consolata missionary since 1957 and moved to Boa Vista in 1965, he reveals that “the company owner was elected and re-elected a federal representative for the Roraima state and was known as the ‘man with the golden gun’”. This documentation work was conducted during a trip of the Action for Citizenship, at the invitation of Senator Severo Gomes, to investigate crimes against human rights on the Yanomami Indigenous Land. Its truthfulness constitutes irrefutable evidence of the ongoing genocides, whose national and international repercussions are meant to reverse or, at least, control situations of abuse.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“There is no denying that images can mobilize public opinion and awaken it from torpor, indifference or ignorance. In the drawn-out demarcation process of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the release of Claudia Andujar and Carlo Zacquini’s photographs played a fundamental role in raising awareness. Despite this historic achievement, however, ongoing invasion waves by miners and businessmen in search of gold and cassiterite, with the direct or indirect support of the State and the Armed Forces, keep causing social and environmental disasters due to contamination by mercury and other pollutants. In the Vermelho exhibition, we decided not to expose the victims and to highlight the seductive aesthetics of imperialism. The language of the gold rush assimilates typical codes of touristic ads, with their (western movie!) chromatic scales and typography filled with subliminal messages. While Andujar’s Metais Ltda. [Metals LLC] (1989) assembles a set of travel agency posters of Amazon charter flights, the scenes recorded by Zacquini are self-explanatory: in the heart of the Indigenous territory, you can see a tent belonging to the gold mining company and the helicopter runway. A photographer who has been a Consolata missionary since 1957 and moved to Boa Vista in 1965, he reveals that “the company owner was elected and re-elected a federal representative for the Roraima state and was known as the ‘man with the golden gun’”. This documentation work was conducted during a trip of the Action for Citizenship, at the invitation of Senator Severo Gomes, to investigate crimes against human rights on the Yanomami Indigenous Land. Its truthfulness constitutes irrefutable evidence of the ongoing genocides, whose national and international repercussions are meant to reverse or, at least, control situations of abuse.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
printing with mineral pigment ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper 315 gr
Photo Reproduction
“There is no denying that images can mobilize public opinion and awaken it from torpor, indifference or ignorance. In the drawn-out demarcation process of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the release of Claudia Andujar and Carlo Zacquini’s photographs played a fundamental role in raising awareness. Despite this historic achievement, however, ongoing invasion waves by miners and businessmen in search of gold and cassiterite, with the direct or indirect support of the State and the Armed Forces, keep causing social and environmental disasters due to contamination by mercury and other pollutants. In the Vermelho exhibition, we decided not to expose the victims and to highlight the seductive aesthetics of imperialism. The language of the gold rush assimilates typical codes of touristic ads, with their (western movie!) chromatic scales and typography filled with subliminal messages. While Andujar’s Metais Ltda. [Metals LLC] (1989) assembles a set of travel agency posters of Amazon charter flights, the scenes recorded by Zacquini are self-explanatory: in the heart of the Indigenous territory, you can see a tent belonging to the gold mining company and the helicopter runway. A photographer who has been a Consolata missionary since 1957 and moved to Boa Vista in 1965, he reveals that “the company owner was elected and re-elected a federal representative for the Roraima state and was known as the ‘man with the golden gun’”. This documentation work was conducted during a trip of the Action for Citizenship, at the invitation of Senator Severo Gomes, to investigate crimes against human rights on the Yanomami Indigenous Land. Its truthfulness constitutes irrefutable evidence of the ongoing genocides, whose national and international repercussions are meant to reverse or, at least, control situations of abuse.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“There is no denying that images can mobilize public opinion and awaken it from torpor, indifference or ignorance. In the drawn-out demarcation process of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the release of Claudia Andujar and Carlo Zacquini’s photographs played a fundamental role in raising awareness. Despite this historic achievement, however, ongoing invasion waves by miners and businessmen in search of gold and cassiterite, with the direct or indirect support of the State and the Armed Forces, keep causing social and environmental disasters due to contamination by mercury and other pollutants. In the Vermelho exhibition, we decided not to expose the victims and to highlight the seductive aesthetics of imperialism. The language of the gold rush assimilates typical codes of touristic ads, with their (western movie!) chromatic scales and typography filled with subliminal messages. While Andujar’s Metais Ltda. [Metals LLC] (1989) assembles a set of travel agency posters of Amazon charter flights, the scenes recorded by Zacquini are self-explanatory: in the heart of the Indigenous territory, you can see a tent belonging to the gold mining company and the helicopter runway. A photographer who has been a Consolata missionary since 1957 and moved to Boa Vista in 1965, he reveals that “the company owner was elected and re-elected a federal representative for the Roraima state and was known as the ‘man with the golden gun’”. This documentation work was conducted during a trip of the Action for Citizenship, at the invitation of Senator Severo Gomes, to investigate crimes against human rights on the Yanomami Indigenous Land. Its truthfulness constitutes irrefutable evidence of the ongoing genocides, whose national and international repercussions are meant to reverse or, at least, control situations of abuse.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
printing with mineral pigment ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper 315 gr
Photo Reproduction
“There is no denying that images can mobilize public opinion and awaken it from torpor, indifference or ignorance. In the drawn-out demarcation process of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the release of Claudia Andujar and Carlo Zacquini’s photographs played a fundamental role in raising awareness. Despite this historic achievement, however, ongoing invasion waves by miners and businessmen in search of gold and cassiterite, with the direct or indirect support of the State and the Armed Forces, keep causing social and environmental disasters due to contamination by mercury and other pollutants. In the Vermelho exhibition, we decided not to expose the victims and to highlight the seductive aesthetics of imperialism. The language of the gold rush assimilates typical codes of touristic ads, with their (western movie!) chromatic scales and typography filled with subliminal messages. While Andujar’s Metais Ltda. [Metals LLC] (1989) assembles a set of travel agency posters of Amazon charter flights, the scenes recorded by Zacquini are self-explanatory: in the heart of the Indigenous territory, you can see a tent belonging to the gold mining company and the helicopter runway. A photographer who has been a Consolata missionary since 1957 and moved to Boa Vista in 1965, he reveals that “the company owner was elected and re-elected a federal representative for the Roraima state and was known as the ‘man with the golden gun’”. This documentation work was conducted during a trip of the Action for Citizenship, at the invitation of Senator Severo Gomes, to investigate crimes against human rights on the Yanomami Indigenous Land. Its truthfulness constitutes irrefutable evidence of the ongoing genocides, whose national and international repercussions are meant to reverse or, at least, control situations of abuse.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“There is no denying that images can mobilize public opinion and awaken it from torpor, indifference or ignorance. In the drawn-out demarcation process of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the release of Claudia Andujar and Carlo Zacquini’s photographs played a fundamental role in raising awareness. Despite this historic achievement, however, ongoing invasion waves by miners and businessmen in search of gold and cassiterite, with the direct or indirect support of the State and the Armed Forces, keep causing social and environmental disasters due to contamination by mercury and other pollutants. In the Vermelho exhibition, we decided not to expose the victims and to highlight the seductive aesthetics of imperialism. The language of the gold rush assimilates typical codes of touristic ads, with their (western movie!) chromatic scales and typography filled with subliminal messages. While Andujar’s Metais Ltda. [Metals LLC] (1989) assembles a set of travel agency posters of Amazon charter flights, the scenes recorded by Zacquini are self-explanatory: in the heart of the Indigenous territory, you can see a tent belonging to the gold mining company and the helicopter runway. A photographer who has been a Consolata missionary since 1957 and moved to Boa Vista in 1965, he reveals that “the company owner was elected and re-elected a federal representative for the Roraima state and was known as the ‘man with the golden gun’”. This documentation work was conducted during a trip of the Action for Citizenship, at the invitation of Senator Severo Gomes, to investigate crimes against human rights on the Yanomami Indigenous Land. Its truthfulness constitutes irrefutable evidence of the ongoing genocides, whose national and international repercussions are meant to reverse or, at least, control situations of abuse.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
printing with mineral pigment ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper 315 gr
Photo Reproduction
“There is no denying that images can mobilize public opinion and awaken it from torpor, indifference or ignorance. In the drawn-out demarcation process of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the release of Claudia Andujar and Carlo Zacquini’s photographs played a fundamental role in raising awareness. Despite this historic achievement, however, ongoing invasion waves by miners and businessmen in search of gold and cassiterite, with the direct or indirect support of the State and the Armed Forces, keep causing social and environmental disasters due to contamination by mercury and other pollutants. In the Vermelho exhibition, we decided not to expose the victims and to highlight the seductive aesthetics of imperialism. The language of the gold rush assimilates typical codes of touristic ads, with their (western movie!) chromatic scales and typography filled with subliminal messages. While Andujar’s Metais Ltda. [Metals LLC] (1989) assembles a set of travel agency posters of Amazon charter flights, the scenes recorded by Zacquini are self-explanatory: in the heart of the Indigenous territory, you can see a tent belonging to the gold mining company and the helicopter runway. A photographer who has been a Consolata missionary since 1957 and moved to Boa Vista in 1965, he reveals that “the company owner was elected and re-elected a federal representative for the Roraima state and was known as the ‘man with the golden gun’”. This documentation work was conducted during a trip of the Action for Citizenship, at the invitation of Senator Severo Gomes, to investigate crimes against human rights on the Yanomami Indigenous Land. Its truthfulness constitutes irrefutable evidence of the ongoing genocides, whose national and international repercussions are meant to reverse or, at least, control situations of abuse.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“There is no denying that images can mobilize public opinion and awaken it from torpor, indifference or ignorance. In the drawn-out demarcation process of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the release of Claudia Andujar and Carlo Zacquini’s photographs played a fundamental role in raising awareness. Despite this historic achievement, however, ongoing invasion waves by miners and businessmen in search of gold and cassiterite, with the direct or indirect support of the State and the Armed Forces, keep causing social and environmental disasters due to contamination by mercury and other pollutants. In the Vermelho exhibition, we decided not to expose the victims and to highlight the seductive aesthetics of imperialism. The language of the gold rush assimilates typical codes of touristic ads, with their (western movie!) chromatic scales and typography filled with subliminal messages. While Andujar’s Metais Ltda. [Metals LLC] (1989) assembles a set of travel agency posters of Amazon charter flights, the scenes recorded by Zacquini are self-explanatory: in the heart of the Indigenous territory, you can see a tent belonging to the gold mining company and the helicopter runway. A photographer who has been a Consolata missionary since 1957 and moved to Boa Vista in 1965, he reveals that “the company owner was elected and re-elected a federal representative for the Roraima state and was known as the ‘man with the golden gun’”. This documentation work was conducted during a trip of the Action for Citizenship, at the invitation of Senator Severo Gomes, to investigate crimes against human rights on the Yanomami Indigenous Land. Its truthfulness constitutes irrefutable evidence of the ongoing genocides, whose national and international repercussions are meant to reverse or, at least, control situations of abuse.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Installation with mixed midia
Photo Filipe Berndt
“[…] how can artistic language abolish the rule of the lords?
Pastor Ventura Profana’s research focused on the methodology of neo-Pentecostal churches. She was educated in Baptist temples and claims to be a prophetess “of the abundance of Black, Indigenous and transvestite life”. Composed after the liturgy of a true hymn to life (to “eternal life”, no less), the music video for the song Eu não vou morrer [I am not going to die] (2020) evades the Lord to honor the female Orixás (Yabás). Profana’s epiphanic release allows a vertiginous plunge into what has been the annihilation of ancestries, intelligences and utopias. One listens to a psalm praising people finally free from colonial policies of extermination, and one exults with the path from the furnace to the living waters in Calunga, da Cruz à Encruzilhada [Calunga, from the Cross to the Crossroads]. This work evokes intergenerational dreams and visions through a fabulous dialogue with matter (who does not want to learn how to fly?), ushering in the time of the Black trans women inside the white cube of the art “cathedral”.
Profana explains in several statements that this Lord transcends religious order and must be projected onto other patriarchal figures (the landowner, the gun advocate, the patron saint…). It is her pastoral mission to invest the insurrectional fury of peripheral bodies attacked by extractive capital against all the explicit and implicit patriarchy of a Brazilian state conceived through its enslavement history. […]”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“[…] how can artistic language abolish the rule of the lords?
Pastor Ventura Profana’s research focused on the methodology of neo-Pentecostal churches. She was educated in Baptist temples and claims to be a prophetess “of the abundance of Black, Indigenous and transvestite life”. Composed after the liturgy of a true hymn to life (to “eternal life”, no less), the music video for the song Eu não vou morrer [I am not going to die] (2020) evades the Lord to honor the female Orixás (Yabás). Profana’s epiphanic release allows a vertiginous plunge into what has been the annihilation of ancestries, intelligences and utopias. One listens to a psalm praising people finally free from colonial policies of extermination, and one exults with the path from the furnace to the living waters in Calunga, da Cruz à Encruzilhada [Calunga, from the Cross to the Crossroads]. This work evokes intergenerational dreams and visions through a fabulous dialogue with matter (who does not want to learn how to fly?), ushering in the time of the Black trans women inside the white cube of the art “cathedral”.
Profana explains in several statements that this Lord transcends religious order and must be projected onto other patriarchal figures (the landowner, the gun advocate, the patron saint…). It is her pastoral mission to invest the insurrectional fury of peripheral bodies attacked by extractive capital against all the explicit and implicit patriarchy of a Brazilian state conceived through its enslavement history. […]”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Photo Filipe Berndt
Pastor Ventura Profana’s research focused on the methodology of neo-Pentecostal churches. She was educated in Baptist temples and claims to be a prophetess “of the abundance of Black, Indigenous and transvestite life”. Composed after the liturgy of a true hymn to life (to “eternal life”, no less), the music video for the song Eu não vou morrer [I am not going to die] (2020) evades the Lord to honor the female Orixás (Yabás). Profana's epiphanic release allows a vertiginous plunge into what has been the annihilation of ancestries, intelligences and utopias. One listens to a psalm praising people finally free from colonial policies of extermination, and one exults with the path from the furnace to the living waters in Calunga, da Cruz à Encruzilhada [Calunga, from the Cross to the Crossroads]. This work evokes intergenerational dreams and visions through a fabulous dialogue with matter (who does not want to learn how to fly?), ushering in the time of the Black trans women inside the white cube of the art “cathedral”.
Profana explains in several statements that this Lord transcends religious order and must be projected onto other patriarchal figures (the landowner, the gun advocate, the patron saint...). It is her pastoral mission to invest the insurrectional fury of peripheral bodies attacked by extractive capital against all the explicit and implicit patriarchy of a Brazilian state conceived through its enslavement history. […]”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Pastor Ventura Profana’s research focused on the methodology of neo-Pentecostal churches. She was educated in Baptist temples and claims to be a prophetess “of the abundance of Black, Indigenous and transvestite life”. Composed after the liturgy of a true hymn to life (to “eternal life”, no less), the music video for the song Eu não vou morrer [I am not going to die] (2020) evades the Lord to honor the female Orixás (Yabás). Profana's epiphanic release allows a vertiginous plunge into what has been the annihilation of ancestries, intelligences and utopias. One listens to a psalm praising people finally free from colonial policies of extermination, and one exults with the path from the furnace to the living waters in Calunga, da Cruz à Encruzilhada [Calunga, from the Cross to the Crossroads]. This work evokes intergenerational dreams and visions through a fabulous dialogue with matter (who does not want to learn how to fly?), ushering in the time of the Black trans women inside the white cube of the art “cathedral”.
Profana explains in several statements that this Lord transcends religious order and must be projected onto other patriarchal figures (the landowner, the gun advocate, the patron saint...). It is her pastoral mission to invest the insurrectional fury of peripheral bodies attacked by extractive capital against all the explicit and implicit patriarchy of a Brazilian state conceived through its enslavement history. […]”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Photo Filipe Berndt
Photo Filipe Berndt
Photo Filipe Berndt
inkjet printing
Photo Filipe Berndt
“In the same room as Andujar, Zacquini and Profana, Cultivo [Tillage] and Bancada [Caucus] (2021), two photographs from the “Cotidiano” [Daily] series by militant transsexual artist and performer Vulcanica Pokaropa, expands the above agenda with the ongoing fight against the landowners’ congressional faction, which protects agricultural companies known for their deforestation and invasion of protected areas.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“In the same room as Andujar, Zacquini and Profana, Cultivo [Tillage] and Bancada [Caucus] (2021), two photographs from the “Cotidiano” [Daily] series by militant transsexual artist and performer Vulcanica Pokaropa, expands the above agenda with the ongoing fight against the landowners’ congressional faction, which protects agricultural companies known for their deforestation and invasion of protected areas.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
inkjet printing
Photo repruduction
“In the same room as Andujar, Zacquini and Profana, Cultivo [Tillage] and Bancada [Caucus] (2021), two photographs from the “Cotidiano” [Daily] series by militant transsexual artist and performer Vulcanica Pokaropa, expands the above agenda with the ongoing fight against the landowners’ congressional faction, which protects agricultural companies known for their deforestation and invasion of protected areas.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“In the same room as Andujar, Zacquini and Profana, Cultivo [Tillage] and Bancada [Caucus] (2021), two photographs from the “Cotidiano” [Daily] series by militant transsexual artist and performer Vulcanica Pokaropa, expands the above agenda with the ongoing fight against the landowners’ congressional faction, which protects agricultural companies known for their deforestation and invasion of protected areas.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
inkjet printing
Photo reproduction
“In the same room as Andujar, Zacquini and Profana, Cultivo [Tillage] and Bancada [Caucus] (2021), two photographs from the “Cotidiano” [Daily] series by militant transsexual artist and performer Vulcanica Pokaropa, expands the above agenda with the ongoing fight against the landowners’ congressional faction, which protects agricultural companies known for their deforestation and invasion of protected areas.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“In the same room as Andujar, Zacquini and Profana, Cultivo [Tillage] and Bancada [Caucus] (2021), two photographs from the “Cotidiano” [Daily] series by militant transsexual artist and performer Vulcanica Pokaropa, expands the above agenda with the ongoing fight against the landowners’ congressional faction, which protects agricultural companies known for their deforestation and invasion of protected areas.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Analog photography
Photo Filipe Berndt
“There is no denying that images can mobilize public opinion and awaken it from torpor, indifference or ignorance. In the drawn-out demarcation process of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the release of Claudia Andujar and Carlo Zacquini’s photographs played a fundamental role in raising awareness. Despite this historic achievement, however, ongoing invasion waves by miners and businessmen in search of gold and cassiterite, with the direct or indirect support of the State and the Armed Forces, keep causing social and environmental disasters due to contamination by mercury and other pollutants. In the Vermelho exhibition, we decided not to expose the victims and to highlight the seductive aesthetics of imperialism. The language of the gold rush assimilates typical codes of touristic ads, with their (western movie!) chromatic scales and typography filled with subliminal messages. While Andujar’s Metais Ltda. [Metals LLC] (1989) assembles a set of travel agency posters of Amazon charter flights, the scenes recorded by Zacquini are self-explanatory: in the heart of the Indigenous territory, you can see a tent belonging to the gold mining company and the helicopter runway. A photographer who has been a Consolata missionary since 1957 and moved to Boa Vista in 1965, he reveals that “the company owner was elected and re-elected a federal representative for the Roraima state and was known as the ‘man with the golden gun’”. This documentation work was conducted during a trip of the Action for Citizenship, at the invitation of Senator Severo Gomes, to investigate crimes against human rights on the Yanomami Indigenous Land. Its truthfulness constitutes irrefutable evidence of the ongoing genocides, whose national and international repercussions are meant to reverse or, at least, control situations of abuse.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“There is no denying that images can mobilize public opinion and awaken it from torpor, indifference or ignorance. In the drawn-out demarcation process of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the release of Claudia Andujar and Carlo Zacquini’s photographs played a fundamental role in raising awareness. Despite this historic achievement, however, ongoing invasion waves by miners and businessmen in search of gold and cassiterite, with the direct or indirect support of the State and the Armed Forces, keep causing social and environmental disasters due to contamination by mercury and other pollutants. In the Vermelho exhibition, we decided not to expose the victims and to highlight the seductive aesthetics of imperialism. The language of the gold rush assimilates typical codes of touristic ads, with their (western movie!) chromatic scales and typography filled with subliminal messages. While Andujar’s Metais Ltda. [Metals LLC] (1989) assembles a set of travel agency posters of Amazon charter flights, the scenes recorded by Zacquini are self-explanatory: in the heart of the Indigenous territory, you can see a tent belonging to the gold mining company and the helicopter runway. A photographer who has been a Consolata missionary since 1957 and moved to Boa Vista in 1965, he reveals that “the company owner was elected and re-elected a federal representative for the Roraima state and was known as the ‘man with the golden gun’”. This documentation work was conducted during a trip of the Action for Citizenship, at the invitation of Senator Severo Gomes, to investigate crimes against human rights on the Yanomami Indigenous Land. Its truthfulness constitutes irrefutable evidence of the ongoing genocides, whose national and international repercussions are meant to reverse or, at least, control situations of abuse.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Photo Filipe Berndt
Iron and three thousand polyester ribbons
Photo Filipe Berndt
“The iron sculpture Sentinela avançada, guarda imortal [Advanced Sentinel, Immortal Guard] (2020) heralds the stormy encounter between the warrior Iansã, materialized in the Senhor do Bonfim red satin ribbons, and the colonial poison that drips from the premises of Christianity — beat it, evil grigri, you bedbug of a petty monk.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“The iron sculpture Sentinela avançada, guarda imortal [Advanced Sentinel, Immortal Guard] (2020) heralds the stormy encounter between the warrior Iansã, materialized in the Senhor do Bonfim red satin ribbons, and the colonial poison that drips from the premises of Christianity — beat it, evil grigri, you bedbug of a petty monk.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Photo Filipe Berndt
Photo Filipe Berndt
Photo Filipe Berndt
video, color and sound
Photo video still
“The modern myth of a universal history spread by Europe appears in Clara Ianni’s Segunda Natureza [Second Nature] (2023), filmed inside the Maastricht Lutheran Church (Netherlands). The artist addresses the notion of capital accumulation (seeds, fibers, minerals…), uniting the themes of land exploitation and the exploitation of human labor. The result of the Christianized world, colonial extraction based its expansion on several separations. The split between (man’s) body and spirit for greater control over Nature stems from Western modernity. The Protestant principle Soli Deo gloria (“Glory to God alone”), by which not even life has meaning outside this order, defines other divisions: between the clergy and common people, and between true devotion and false beliefs. Yet, although the film expresses the yearning for the landscape outside the Church’s windows, it is at least an allusion to possibilities of regeneration through the qualities of interdependence and camaraderie.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“The modern myth of a universal history spread by Europe appears in Clara Ianni’s Segunda Natureza [Second Nature] (2023), filmed inside the Maastricht Lutheran Church (Netherlands). The artist addresses the notion of capital accumulation (seeds, fibers, minerals…), uniting the themes of land exploitation and the exploitation of human labor. The result of the Christianized world, colonial extraction based its expansion on several separations. The split between (man’s) body and spirit for greater control over Nature stems from Western modernity. The Protestant principle Soli Deo gloria (“Glory to God alone”), by which not even life has meaning outside this order, defines other divisions: between the clergy and common people, and between true devotion and false beliefs. Yet, although the film expresses the yearning for the landscape outside the Church’s windows, it is at least an allusion to possibilities of regeneration through the qualities of interdependence and camaraderie.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Photo Filipe Berndt
Photo Filipe Berndt
“Interestingly, popular memory holds ancestral knowledge and war strategy to be equivalent. After a trip to Angola in 2018, Ani Ganzala has researched the influence of botany on the Black Diaspora. Only an initiated look can apprehend the diversity of vegetation and identify the physical and spiritual healing possibilities of each species. Ganzala was certainly not indifferent to the story of the beatings inflicted by local resistance forces on Portuguese sailors with nettlespurge stalks. Even though no documentary evidence has been found on freed slave Maria Filipa’s, her actions during Bahia’s independence process live in the Itaparica islanders’ imagination. In this critical dimension of historically marginalized bodies, the Black feminism of artist-activists like Ganzala joins a growing chorus, along with studies aimed at recognizing Bahia’s legacy in the formation of contemporary Brazil.”
Excerpt from No fim da madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“Interestingly, popular memory holds ancestral knowledge and war strategy to be equivalent. After a trip to Angola in 2018, Ani Ganzala has researched the influence of botany on the Black Diaspora. Only an initiated look can apprehend the diversity of vegetation and identify the physical and spiritual healing possibilities of each species. Ganzala was certainly not indifferent to the story of the beatings inflicted by local resistance forces on Portuguese sailors with nettlespurge stalks. Even though no documentary evidence has been found on freed slave Maria Filipa’s, her actions during Bahia’s independence process live in the Itaparica islanders’ imagination. In this critical dimension of historically marginalized bodies, the Black feminism of artist-activists like Ganzala joins a growing chorus, along with studies aimed at recognizing Bahia’s legacy in the formation of contemporary Brazil.”
Excerpt from No fim da madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Acrylic on canvas, with lace, beads and satin ribbons
Photo Filipe Berndt
“Interestingly, popular memory holds ancestral knowledge and war strategy to be equivalent. After a trip to Angola in 2018, Ani Ganzala has researched the influence of botany on the Black Diaspora. Only an initiated look can apprehend the diversity of vegetation and identify the physical and spiritual healing possibilities of each species. Ganzala was certainly not indifferent to the story of the beatings inflicted by local resistance forces on Portuguese sailors with nettlespurge stalks. Even though no documentary evidence has been found on freed slave Maria Filipa’s, her actions during Bahia’s independence process live in the Itaparica islanders’ imagination. In this critical dimension of historically marginalized bodies, the Black feminism of artist-activists like Ganzala joins a growing chorus, along with studies aimed at recognizing Bahia’s legacy in the formation of contemporary Brazil.”
Excerpt from No fim da madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“Interestingly, popular memory holds ancestral knowledge and war strategy to be equivalent. After a trip to Angola in 2018, Ani Ganzala has researched the influence of botany on the Black Diaspora. Only an initiated look can apprehend the diversity of vegetation and identify the physical and spiritual healing possibilities of each species. Ganzala was certainly not indifferent to the story of the beatings inflicted by local resistance forces on Portuguese sailors with nettlespurge stalks. Even though no documentary evidence has been found on freed slave Maria Filipa’s, her actions during Bahia’s independence process live in the Itaparica islanders’ imagination. In this critical dimension of historically marginalized bodies, the Black feminism of artist-activists like Ganzala joins a growing chorus, along with studies aimed at recognizing Bahia’s legacy in the formation of contemporary Brazil.”
Excerpt from No fim da madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Photo Filipe Berndt
Photo Filipe Berndt
Digital printing on Hahnemühle Bamboo 290g
Photo Filipe Berndt
“…From the depths of these nebulous surfaces, a Black boy draws our attention, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, dark shorts, ankle socks and black polished moccasins. Despite documenting an event, the image hides several other worlds. The result offers a diagnosis of the relations of power and domination that have always affected Afro-Brazilian citizenship. Several hands skillfully adjusted this small body to prepare it for the sacrament of the Eucharist and for the paper image to be proudly distributed among the maternal uncles. Placing the ethical status of photography under suspicion, Neves blurs his own portrait to display a torn childhood: the child’s left hand holds an element of the imposed culture; his right hand, the instrument of his ancestral resistance”.
Lisette Lagnado
“…From the depths of these nebulous surfaces, a Black boy draws our attention, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, dark shorts, ankle socks and black polished moccasins. Despite documenting an event, the image hides several other worlds. The result offers a diagnosis of the relations of power and domination that have always affected Afro-Brazilian citizenship. Several hands skillfully adjusted this small body to prepare it for the sacrament of the Eucharist and for the paper image to be proudly distributed among the maternal uncles. Placing the ethical status of photography under suspicion, Neves blurs his own portrait to display a torn childhood: the child’s left hand holds an element of the imposed culture; his right hand, the instrument of his ancestral resistance”.
Lisette Lagnado
Digital printing on Hahnemühle Bamboo 290g
“…From the depths of these nebulous surfaces, a Black boy draws our attention, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, dark shorts, ankle socks and black polished moccasins. Despite documenting an event, the image hides several other worlds. The result offers a diagnosis of the relations of power and domination that have always affected Afro-Brazilian citizenship. Several hands skillfully adjusted this small body to prepare it for the sacrament of the Eucharist and for the paper image to be proudly distributed among the maternal uncles. Placing the ethical status of photography under suspicion, Neves blurs his own portrait to display a torn childhood: the child’s left hand holds an element of the imposed culture; his right hand, the instrument of his ancestral resistance”. Lisette Lagnado
“…From the depths of these nebulous surfaces, a Black boy draws our attention, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, dark shorts, ankle socks and black polished moccasins. Despite documenting an event, the image hides several other worlds. The result offers a diagnosis of the relations of power and domination that have always affected Afro-Brazilian citizenship. Several hands skillfully adjusted this small body to prepare it for the sacrament of the Eucharist and for the paper image to be proudly distributed among the maternal uncles. Placing the ethical status of photography under suspicion, Neves blurs his own portrait to display a torn childhood: the child’s left hand holds an element of the imposed culture; his right hand, the instrument of his ancestral resistance”. Lisette Lagnado
6 emulsions in gelatin and silver on cotton paper and oil painting
Photo Filipe Berndt
“Artist Eustáquio Neves’s Sete [Seven] (2023) lends a new breadth to the Catholic religion. We have before us six photographic enlargements (photographic emulsion on cotton paper and oil painting) along with a digital copy from an original file of the author’s first communion, now covered in countless layers of pigments and chemicals. From the depths of these nebulous surfaces, a Black boy draws our attention, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, dark shorts, ankle socks and black polished moccasins. Despite documenting an event, the image hides several other worlds. The result offers a diagnosis of the relations of power and domination that have always affected Afro-Brazilian citizenship. Several hands skillfully adjusted this small body to prepare it for the sacrament of the Eucharist and for the paper image to be proudly distributed among the maternal uncles. Placing the ethical status of photography under suspicion, Neves blurs his own portrait to display a torn childhood: the child’s left hand holds an element of the imposed culture; his right hand, the instrument of his ancestral resistance.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“Artist Eustáquio Neves’s Sete [Seven] (2023) lends a new breadth to the Catholic religion. We have before us six photographic enlargements (photographic emulsion on cotton paper and oil painting) along with a digital copy from an original file of the author’s first communion, now covered in countless layers of pigments and chemicals. From the depths of these nebulous surfaces, a Black boy draws our attention, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, dark shorts, ankle socks and black polished moccasins. Despite documenting an event, the image hides several other worlds. The result offers a diagnosis of the relations of power and domination that have always affected Afro-Brazilian citizenship. Several hands skillfully adjusted this small body to prepare it for the sacrament of the Eucharist and for the paper image to be proudly distributed among the maternal uncles. Placing the ethical status of photography under suspicion, Neves blurs his own portrait to display a torn childhood: the child’s left hand holds an element of the imposed culture; his right hand, the instrument of his ancestral resistance.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
Photo Filipe Berndt
6 emulsions in gelatin and silver on cotton paper and oil painting
Photo Filipe Berndt
“Artist Eustáquio Neves’s Sete [Seven] (2023) lends a new breadth to the Catholic religion. We have before us six photographic enlargements (photographic emulsion on cotton paper and oil painting) along with a digital copy from an original file of the author’s first communion, now covered in countless layers of pigments and chemicals. From the depths of these nebulous surfaces, a Black boy draws our attention, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, dark shorts, ankle socks and black polished moccasins. Despite documenting an event, the image hides several other worlds. The result offers a diagnosis of the relations of power and domination that have always affected Afro-Brazilian citizenship. Several hands skillfully adjusted this small body to prepare it for the sacrament of the Eucharist and for the paper image to be proudly distributed among the maternal uncles. Placing the ethical status of photography under suspicion, Neves blurs his own portrait to display a torn childhood: the child’s left hand holds an element of the imposed culture; his right hand, the instrument of his ancestral resistance.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
“Artist Eustáquio Neves’s Sete [Seven] (2023) lends a new breadth to the Catholic religion. We have before us six photographic enlargements (photographic emulsion on cotton paper and oil painting) along with a digital copy from an original file of the author’s first communion, now covered in countless layers of pigments and chemicals. From the depths of these nebulous surfaces, a Black boy draws our attention, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, dark shorts, ankle socks and black polished moccasins. Despite documenting an event, the image hides several other worlds. The result offers a diagnosis of the relations of power and domination that have always affected Afro-Brazilian citizenship. Several hands skillfully adjusted this small body to prepare it for the sacrament of the Eucharist and for the paper image to be proudly distributed among the maternal uncles. Placing the ethical status of photography under suspicion, Neves blurs his own portrait to display a torn childhood: the child’s left hand holds an element of the imposed culture; his right hand, the instrument of his ancestral resistance.”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado