“It is important to say that for Aimé Césaire négritude, a term that first appeared in the magazine L’Étudiant noir [The Black Student] in 1934, is a concept that is simultaneously literary and political. By reappropriating a racist term from the dominant colonizing language, he intends to promote Africa and its culture. A similar fate runs through the series of small black and red canvases on which André Vargas invents “his” Africanizations of the Brazilian Portuguese language. Mirroring Lélia Gonzalez’s pretuguês [“Blacktuguese”], it is a somewhat surrealistic and random play on words that seeks to trace approximations through sounds: “fomnologia”, “preticado”, “ilêitura”, “caciqnificado”, “perónome”, “sujeitupi”, “pluhaux”. Like the image-filled Creole language, this speech emerges from the slave ship’s hold to honor the linguistic branches that encompassed more than 600 languages forcefully removed from the African continent.”

Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado

Quem come quiabo não pega feitiço [Whoever eats okra doesn’t get spells]

The work is in honor of Xangô and the culture of all African-based religions in Brazil.

Evoking the power of okra, the phrase is a popular saying common among the people of axé, which reinforces the power of this vegetable, especially, in protecting those who share the culture.

Okra is of African origin and present in foods used in afro-brazilian rituals, it is much appreciated in Brazilian homes and is dedicated to Xangô, the Orixá of fire, when used in the amalá. Amalá being a ritual food with a variety of uses and ingredients, but it´s base is most often a mix of okra and manioc.

Painting on raw cotton that stems from a famous ex-voto from the city of La Rochelle that is exposed in the cathedral of San Luis, where the owner of a slave ship thanks the return of his vessel after a long time adrift at sea.

The painting, which paraphrases the old ex-voto, evokes another history and another of the sea´s powers, one much earlier and much greater for black people from before the terrible time of slavery, which is their relationship with the sacred, present in this work through the Orisha Iemanjá, queen of the sea, as well as her boat of offerings.

Molotov cocktails made with Rum bottles. Rum is an ancient drink which has been used as barter to trade in enslaved blacks.

There is still a French brand that explores in its name and image, the colonial stereotypes of blackness as a racist assumption for using these subjects and thus, metaphorically, hurling the cry (GRITO) left over from the label of this history on the colonizing foundations that still remain standing.

This work reviews a painting exhibited at the Museum of the New World in La Rochelle, “Les mascarades nupitiales”, which portrays enslaved people with dwarfism in the court of Queen Maria, mother of Dom João VI of Portugal, wearing noble clothes in celebration of the wedding of one of these enslaved people.

The idea of this work is to remove these people portrayed in this old painting from this place of imitation of nobility that entertained the court as exotic, picturesque and eccentric things; every European traveler in search of the exotic new world and re-locate them in a place where the ancestry that includes them is the object of worship, painting them as Orixás, so that they live free and in full power of themselves.

The Orixás referenced in this work are, from right to left, starting at the bottom: Ogun (Orixá of War and technology), Exu (Orixá of communication and lord of all paths), Oxum (Queen of the waters of rivers, of beauty and of fertility); above: Xangô (Lord of justice and fire, King of the city of Oyó), Iansã (Queen of lightning and winds and who dominates the rites of passage between life and death) and, at the highest point, Oxalá (Orixá elder and counselor who was entrusted by Olodumarê, the greatest of the orixás, to create the world.

The intrinsic relationships of words that are formally very close, such as “Île” in French and “Ilê” in Yoruba, create complex narratives for understanding the world. Ilê, in Yoruba means house and in Afro-Brazilian religions it is this word that we use to indicate the temples where the cults take place.

The Ilê, or the house, is the space of the sacred, but, surrounded by persecution from all sides, because Afro-diasporic religions are targets of demonization, violence and prejudice in every part of the world, it resists as an island of welcome and peace.

The formal game between the most common of French greetings, ça va, and one of the most popular religious greetings of African origin in Brazil, saravá, is the poetry produced by blurring the borders of language to lead us to a healthy hybridity of encounters between cultures.

This work is a small white wooden bench, similar to the benches used by the Pretos Velhos [the old blacks], which carries a phrase that guides the research I was able to carry out in La Rochelle. Pretos Velhos are Umbanda entities, evolved disembodied spirits of enslaved black people who return to the world to advise us and bless us against bad energies.

A religious greeting made in the presence of these entities in Umbanda: “Adorei as almas! [I loved the souls!]”, might, in part, have as a possible origin, the modification of a command that made use of the French word “doré”.

It was the bridging of these words that made it possible for me to cross the Atlantic and connect with this terrible period in human history – responding by acknowledging my ancestry – with the profound spell of historical revisions.

The map of the Atlantic Ocean painted in red on a black Burlington fabric is the mark of the violence of the period of enslavement that will spread across the entire coast that this ocean bathes.

The phrase, in Portuguese, plays with the meaning of the name of another ocean, the Pacific, to reinforce the historical identity of the Atlantic as a space of pain and affliction during the period of slavery.

Bandeira de duas faces em preto e branco (cores do yin e yang da filosofia oriental, mas também cores que simbolizam os pretos velhos nas umbandas brasileiras) onde a palavra francesa “noir” tem seu significado repensado através de correspondências formais e sonoras com palavras do português. “No ir” em português é como estar no caminho e “No ar” é como ascender, ir aos céus. E, dessa maneira, partindo de outras premissas para traduções mais poéticas do que literais, perceber o caminho de ascendência da negritude nos espaços de poder.

The plant, which in France is known by the name “Langue de belle-mère”, in Portuguese is called “Espada de São Jorge” [Saint George’s Sword], or, as we see in the cults of religions of African origin in Brazil, “Espada de Ogum” [Ogun’s Sword] and it is generally used in homes as an amulet, a plant that is capable of removing energy from the house, because it has the strength of the holy warrior and the general Orisha.
São Jorge and Ogum are syncretized in Umbanda, the most popular syncretic religion that emerged in the early 20th century in Rio de Janeiro, which makes the feast of the Catholic saint one of the most frequented and ecumenical in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

In this work, the objects evoke the presence of the invisible. It is possible to imagine, by the arrangement of the paintings, the body of two people sitting on the benches and using the objects that orbit them. They are objects of religious use by the pretos velhos, but which refer, as it should be, to the culture and customs of the enslaved black peoples in Brazil.
The work is done with raw cotton rags, pencil and coffee. With that, Vargas elaborates a construction that makes use of some of the most recognized commodities of the period of slavery in Brazilian lands – coffee, cotton and sugar – and, not by chance, products that tell the story of his ancestors who were forced to work in mills that had these plantations.

“Work composed of banners with phrases in which the burning of old sugar cane mills in Rio de Janeiro is proposed as a way to purge the spectre of colonial relations from the territorial dictates of the city, in a projection of the past that recounts the history of our resistance” – André Vargas

“Small chapel painted inside a fire extinguisher safebox, where elements coexist that are at first glance contrary - a glass of water and a lit candle - in the search for strength and faith to put out the fires of everyday life” – André Vargas

“This is a work in honor of the Orisha Xangô, whose weapon is the oxê, a kind of doublebladed ax, but it is also a tribute to the popular Saint John - associated with Xangô in the Umbandas in Rio de Janeiro - honored in the June festivals and to whom the bonfire is dedicated as part of these festivities.” – André Vargas

In the colors of the guides of Xangô, Orixá ruled by fire, this work marks the poetry of the dexterity of the orixá with its element in a phrase that synthesizes all its power.

In the colors of the guides of Xangô, Orixá ruled by fire, this work marks the poetry of the dexterity of the orixá with its element in a phrase that synthesizes all its power.

“From the colors of the Orisha Exu, lord of the crossroads, of the paths, of the fairs, of the streets, guardian of the houses’ entrances and responsible for communication, to the colors of the anarchist-syndicalist movement, the agenda is only one: the claim and dispute of the street as a stage for the production of a Brazilianness that takes place at the crossroads of the struggles” – André Vargas

“The pepper plant, in addition to being used as an amulet against evil eye in homes, can also be used to bless. The phrase present in this work is an excerpt from a charm made to cure headaches” – André Vargas

“Based on the aesthetics of the Prophet Gentileza, an artist and popular figure from the Rio de Janeiro streets, where he painted his prophecies in the 90s, the work presents a non-pacifist panorama of action and reaction in contrast to the tone set by the prophet, playing with the manifold meanings of the word “flame” – André Vargas

“In the swing of popular expressions, the seriousness of “bringing everything to fire and iron” (Brazilian popular expression that means taking everything too seriously, or to the extreme) is combined with the domains of the blacksmith Orisha who uses these same materials (iron and fire) to exercise his role as a builder of tools, weapons and other technologies” – André Vargas

“Withdrawn from the domains of optics, the phrase seen in this work is, conceptually, about the color black, but becomes something like a prescription and a mantra of “blackening” that goes from the artist’s production to the spectator’s optics, claiming other readings of the world, insurgents regarding this relation of alterities” – André Amorim

“Seven bottles of Exu’s marafo (a type of moonshine) made from Molotov cocktails demonstrate that the fight and the dispute that take place on the street owe reverence to the lord of this domain” – André Vargas

“A sequence from the “Povo” (“People”) series, made in the fragments and the mysteries of absences that make up the images and names of Umbanda (Afro-Brazilian cult) entities in their particular poetics” – André Vargas

“A sequence from the “Povo” (“People”) series, made in the fragments and the mysteries of absences that make up the images and names of Umbanda (Afro-Brazilian cult) entities in their particular poetics” – André Vargas

“I was always imagining the things that the open mouths of the characters in Heitor dos Prazeres’ paintings could be saying. The joy and jubilation of each scenario created by this master always invited me to sing. Today I sing in color... Hail Heitor dos Prazeres!” – André Vargas

“Kaô is the salute to Xangô, the Orisha of justice, lightning, thunder and fire” – André Vargas

“This work follows, in aesthetics and logic, the perspective of one of my first works: “Figa na fuga” (“Crossed fingers upon fleeing”), in which there is a will to understand the courage in fleeing when staying means continuing to suffer the ills of oppression. Thus, to think of fleeing as courage is to take the very word ‘flight’ as an action of rebelling, making it a concept that, in this view guided by an Afro-centered perspective of history, contradicts the hegemony that leads it to the notion of cowardice”
André Vargas

This series investigates the herbs used by faith healers, as well as the prayers they make when they bless people. It is at the intersection between object- image-herb and writing-prayer-voice that the work sustains the simplicity of popular traditions as a fundamental importance for our constitution.

This series investigates the herbs used by faith healers, as well as the prayers they make when they bless people. It is at the intersection between object- image-herb and writing-prayer-voice that the work sustains the simplicity of popular traditions as a fundamental importance for our constitution.

This series investigates the herbs used by faith healers, as well as the prayers they make when they bless people. It is at the intersection between object- image-herb and writing-prayer-voice that the work sustains the simplicity of popular traditions as a fundamental importance for our constitution.

This series investigates the herbs used by faith healers, as well as the prayers they make when they bless people. It is at the intersection between object- image-herb and writing-prayer-voice that the work sustains the simplicity of popular traditions as a fundamental importance for our constitution.

This series investigates the herbs used by faith healers, as well as the prayers they make when they bless people. It is at the intersection between object- image-herb and writing-prayer-voice that the work sustains the simplicity of popular traditions as a fundamental importance for our constitution.

“This banner was produced as a site specifc for a place inside Parque Lage, in Rio de Janeiro, known as “laundry of the enslaved”. Yes, the territory where the Parque Lage is located was once part of a large sugarcane plantation, and this laundry reminds us that the specter of coloniality keeps wandering around, haunting and assaulting our most fundamental identities and powers. The soul is ancestral. A turmoil in time. And we, past, present and future, will wash it by answering the crudeness of the terms.” André Vargas

This flag in honor of the orixá Ogum claims the power of the origin of the elements that make up the symbol of communism to this orixá who is the owner of the forge and creator of technologies and work tools, inserting black people in the history of western ideologies.

Parade is an action produced for the exhibition “Sal60: a revolution in red, white and black”, curated by Leonardo Antan, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the period known as ‘Revolução Salgueirense’, which marked the history of the culture of Rio de Janeiro. The period of the “Salgueirense Revolution” promoted a series of artistic changes in the carioca carnival, with themes from black culture and new aesthetics that would be in contact with various artistic and cultural movements beiond the samba school parades. Vargas’ action took place in dialogue with the allegory that opened “festa para um re negro” [Feast for a black king], one of the classic parades of that period, presented by the Salgueiro samba school in 1971. The theme told the story of the coming of African princes to Brazil. The allegory carried the phrase “If it were today?”, provoking the audience about how the members of this black royalty would be treated at that time. “So I reproduced the parade of that phrase, crossing the same Avenue Presidente Vargas, which, fifty years earlier, had watched Salgueiro parade. But in this game of pointing to the past, other layers of meaning were added, since I carried this banner that asked “If it were today?” in a year in which carnival, due to the covid19 pandemic, could not take place.”

Parade is an action produced for the exhibition “Sal60: a revolution in red, white and black”, curated by Leonardo Antan, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the period known as ‘Revolução Salgueirense’, which marked the history of the culture of Rio de Janeiro. The period of the “Salgueirense Revolution” promoted a series of artistic changes in the carioca carnival, with themes from black culture and new aesthetics that would be in contact with various artistic and cultural movements beiond the samba school parades. Vargas’ action took place in dialogue with the allegory that opened “festa para um re negro” [Feast for a black king], one of the classic parades of that period, presented by the Salgueiro samba school in 1971. The theme told the story of the coming of African princes to Brazil. The allegory carried the phrase “If it were today?”, provoking the audience about how the members of this black royalty would be treated at that time. “So I reproduced the parade of that phrase, crossing the same Avenue Presidente Vargas, which, fifty years earlier, had watched Salgueiro parade. But in this game of pointing to the past, other layers of meaning were added, since I carried this banner that asked “If it were today?” in a year in which carnival, due to the covid19 pandemic, could not take place.”

“In Calunga Grande, André evokes the memory of the waters of the Atlantic, where more than 2 million Africans are buried after beeing thrown into the sea during the more than three centuries of human trafficking.

A banner of monumental scale that reads Calunga Grande produces meaning in the contact with points that constitute the territory baptized as “Pequena África” by Heitor dos Prazeres. André Vargas and Jéssica Hipólito wear white in reverence to those who came before them, those who conquered death, dreamed and fought for a future of freedom for their descendants.”
Juliana Pereira

“Calunga Grande it is the sea on the infinite horizon that swallows souls. It is the gaze of someone who remains, or is yet to be forcibly carried away, watching someone who has already been caught being erased by violence and distance.
It is the indecipherable absolute that sways the waters in the dungeons of memory. It is where the wind and torment live for me. It is the movement of bodies that leave without any choice.

It is the essence of each grain, it is the excellence of each bubble. It is a non-ground of trampled blood and blue.

It is the sea that is made of death. It’s the cut that pours the rum. It’s everywhere were the sea has been or the sea will be. It’s everywhere there is.”
André Vargas

_{*When crossing the ocean, during the trafficing of enslaved people, Calunga Grande could be the final destination for those who did not arrive alive or healthy. The term was used to designate the sea itself but could also be understood as a cemetery.}

“In Calunga Grande*, André evokes the memory of the waters of the Atlantic, where more than 2 million Africans are buried after beeing thrown into the sea during the more than three centuries of human trafficking.

A banner of monumental scale that reads Calunga Grande produces meaning in the contact with points that constitute the territory baptized as “Pequena África” by Heitor dos Prazeres. André Vargas and Jéssica Hipólito wear white in reverence to those who came before them, those who conquered death, dreamed and fought for a future of freedom for their descendants.”
Juliana Pereira

“Calunga Grande it is the sea on the infinite horizon that swallows souls. It is the gaze of someone who remains, or is yet to be forcibly carried away, watching someone who has already been caught being erased by violence and distance.
It is the indecipherable absolute that sways the waters in the dungeons of memory. It is where the wind and torment live for me. It is the movement of bodies that leave without any choice.

It is the essence of each grain, it is the excellence of each bubble. It is a non-ground of trampled blood and blue.

It is the sea that is made of death. It’s the cut that pours the rum. It’s everywhere were the sea has been or the sea will be. It’s everywhere there is.”
André Vargas

*When crossing the ocean, during the trafficing of enslaved people, Calunga Grande could be the final destination for those who did not arrive alive or healthy. The term was used to designate the sea itself but could also be understood as a cemetery.

This series of actions and banners in process intends to prophesy black references in the city streets where they dispute the spaces where the Christian messages of the hecatomb of sin, the end of the world and salvation prevail.

This series of actions and banners in process intends to prophesy black references in the city streets where they dispute the spaces where the Christian messages of the hecatomb of sin, the end of the world and salvation prevail.

This series of actions and banners in process intends to prophesy black references in the city streets where they dispute the spaces where the Christian messages of the hecatomb of sin, the end of the world and salvation prevail.

This work is done by decomposing the image of a traditional lucky charm, which is the four-leaf clover, to reveal from its leaves the heart symbol with which they are transformed, playing, as in the title, with the Brazilian saying (in free translation): “lucky in gambling, unlucky in love.

Series of nine Bate-bola masks. Bate-bola is an important character in the carnival of the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro.

The masks are painted with the names of the regions of the city where this culture originated. Those are stigmatized and marginalized regions of the city, but in which, with the power of the bate-bolas, the noise that their presence makes against the richest regions of the city is summarized.

The Bate-bola possibly originated from freed slaves. This population which was constantly harassed by the police, wore these costumes to be able to freely play the carnival since it covered their whole body. They used the Bate-bola to protest against the oppression, hitting the balls – that were made from oxen bladder – hard on the streets, to show that they had the strength and power to disturb and transform.

Leafletitng action that took place during the period of the election campaign for the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, which came, for the first time in its history, with two black women running for office. There were two days of leafleting, one in the Meier district and the other in the city center.

In the action, flyers with the words “Não vote em branco!” [dont vote in white!] are distributed, in a lexical game between the act of voting in blank (voting ‘in white’ in brazilian portuguese) – or for nobody – or for a white person.

The title refers to Abdias do Nascimento, a cultural agent, politician and civil and human rights activist for Brazilian black populations, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.

“Having the language as a flag is realizing that the language is produced while it is spoken and, therefore, expressing that “our Portuguese is Creole” – that is, a language that is constituted from the vast contribution of black and indigenous speaking – in addition to the ambiguity of the image built by the stated phrase, is an urgent need to recognize the decolonial power that already exists in this ancestral speech and it is a fact that reorients us to realize that the general bases of our culture go through these same Afro-indigenous dictates.

Blacks and indigenous peoples constituted the majority of speakers of colonial Brazil and crossed with their mother tongues the vocabulary of the colonizer’s language thus reformulating its phonetical and semantical roots to such an extent that we are able to elaborate that the particularities of our we speach is actually “Portuguese”. It is from this language that is built on the black speaking of my ancestors that I empower myself to say that my flag is our voice.”
André Vargas

This work in progress is constituted from fragments collected from the histories from my paternal family that date back to the times of captivity with catchphrases and speeches from my ancestors, mixed with fictional phrases of power takeover in response to some of the symbols of Brazilian slave coloniality.

This series deals - in the partial representation of images of entities from the Umbanda, as well as in the incomplete indicative of their names - with the role of spectators as accomplices in the dynamics of completing text and images, likewise the signification as sacred or profane of those representations.

This series deals - in the partial representation of images of entities from the Umbanda, as well as in the incomplete indicative of their names - with the role of spectators as accomplices in the dynamics of completing text and images, likewise the signification as sacred or profane of those representations.

This series deals - in the partial representation of images of entities from the Umbanda, as well as in the incomplete indicative of their names - with the role of spectators as accomplices in the dynamics of completing text and images, likewise the signification as sacred or profane of those representations.

This series deals - in the partial representation of images of entities from the Umbanda, as well as in the incomplete indicative of their names - with the role of spectators as accomplices in the dynamics of completing text and images, likewise the signification as sacred or profane of those representations.

This series deals - in the partial representation of images of entities from the Umbanda, as well as in the incomplete indicative of their names - with the role of spectators as accomplices in the dynamics of completing text and images, likewise the signification as sacred or profane of those representations.

This series deals - in the partial representation of images of entities from the Umbanda, as well as in the incomplete indicative of their names - with the role of spectators as accomplices in the dynamics of completing text and images, likewise the signification as sacred or profane of those representations.

This series deals - in the partial representation of images of entities from the Umbanda, as well as in the incomplete indicative of their names - with the role of spectators as accomplices in the dynamics of completing text and images, likewise the signification as sacred or profane of those representations.

This work vibrates in the indissoluble relationship between luck and bad luck, since it uses horseshoes, a very popular amulet to call luck, to write the word “never”.

This work is placed in the territory of the superstitions of the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro and other regions of the interior of the state, which believe that leaving the slipper with the sole up can make the mother die.

Ode à Odé is a tribute to the Orixá Oxóssi and his accurate arrow. Different affiliations of Candomblé and Umbanda use different names to designate the same orixás, with Oxossi and Odé being equivalent, although the former is more popular. In Yoruba Odé means hunter. Odé is the hunter god, lord of the forest and of all beings that inhabit it, orixá of abundance and wealth. Currently, the cult of Odé is practically forgotten in Africa, but it is widespread in Brazil, Cuba and other parts of America where the Yoruba culture prevailed. This is due to the city of Kêtu, of which he was king, bieng almost completely destroyed in the mid-eighteenth century, and its inhabitants, many consecrated to Odé, being sold as slaves in Brazil and the Antilles. This fact made possible the rebirth of Kêtu, not as a state, but as an important religious nation of Candomblé.

Patakori is a greeting in Yoruba to the Orixá Ogum - blacksmith, lord of technologies, weapons and work tools.

“Kiô" is the cry of a caboclo from the Umbanda terreiros and Caboclo's Candomblé. A cry that announces the entity's arrival and a cry that throws itself into freedom like the hiss of a great bird that spreads its wings to fly. The most resounding of the screams in our history, which takes place on the banks of any river, where our identities are most deeply rooted.

In this work, the word that is presented summons the spectator-reader to fill his emptiness, deriving from this complementary act connections that re- elaborate the history of literacy, orality and of writing itself from a black perspective. *The presented word, in portuguese, could be read as ‘escrevo’ (I write) or ‘escravo (slave).

André Vargas’s masks complement this dissident perspective on the place of fear in the social imagination of whiteness. At the end of daybreak, the morne forgotten, forgetting to erupt. In O Terror da Sul [The South Terror] (2018-19), the artist refers to the introjection of racism and its relationship with social classes, more specifically the division of Rio’s cultural scene that separates the populous suburbs in the Baixada Fluminense neighborhoods from the so-called “Zona Sul” (the Southern District). His masks address the costumes used in the Clovis tradition (from the English word “clown”), whose groups are made up of masked men roaming the streets dressed as “bate-bola”.

Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado

A possible origin of this movement is related to freed slaves. These, who were sometimes unfairly persecuted by the police, dressed in costumes to be able to freely play at carnival and “use Bate-bola” to protest against oppression, hitting balls made from ox blathers on the ground to show that they had the strength and power to disrupt and transform together.