Luiz Marcelo

AND BO  AND REVOLT

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This survey is an ebo. A job. A macumba!

A decolonial pact, individual and collective.

A transitory ebó, which moves, thanks and curses;

There will be no peace in this world – as long as the ejé of our people stamp the ground!  

There won't be a day of rest – as long as our bodies are targeted by militarization.

There will be no prosperity without our permanence, existence.  

“Exu in schools” (Elza Soares)

There will be no happiness - as long as a mother has to bury her child;

There will be no safety – as long as our bodies have to inhabit the sidewalks

There will be no freedom if incarceration is black.

There won't be a day that a racist goes by without being unmasked.

There will be no peace on this earth – if the racialization of our bodies denies our potentialities.

This is an ebo.

This is a prophecy.

This is a certainty.

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In my work, I seek to guide the discussion about racism and social exclusion of the black and indigenous population.  Brazilian culture, above all, when I perceive the need to oppose a Eurocentric, colonialist model of artistic production, which is perpetuated in the teaching of arts in schools, and which does not delve into such issues with the necessary responsibility.

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Engaged in a process of decolonization of Brazilian artistic production, in the construction of new epistemologies in art and in academia, my work aims to collaborate with the process of resignifying the place of black art in contemporary times. Reflecting on cultural and identity issues, seeking to correct the erasures and silencing that have occurred throughout history.  

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Historical denial directly corroborates the physical and symbolic violence suffered by black people, where bodies are commodified and exterminated. The genocide of black people is legitimized by the structures of power. It is in this context that religious racism is consolidated, reflected, for example, in the attacks and depredations of Candomblé terreiros in several cities in the country, accentuating violence and structural racism.  

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In view of this, it is important to rethink the participation of black people in the construction of narratives and visualities of their artistic practices, taking into account the centrality of the history of Afro-Brazilian art, the African diaspora and the dialogue with the social and cultural environment of traditional peoples of matrices. African women, whose paths are capable of enhancing the reaffirmation of blackness.

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My strategy is to carry out the displacement of poetic narratives and visualities articulated to the ancestral knowledge of traditional peoples, linked to the religiosity of Candomblé terreiros, to universities, cultural centers, museums and galleries, thus contributing to the recognition and appreciation of the black art in whitened contexts.

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The traditions of African origins in Brazil include Candomblé and Quilombismo|aquilombamento, ways of life that integrate ancestry, with characteristics of an aesthetic and ritualistic sense. This tangle of references is full of mysteries, symbologies and rites related to the elements of nature: air, water, earth and fire, which are constitutive and fundamental for the development of this research.

Using the visual poetics of these sacred and also profane rituals, the work thinks about the signs referring to the transe|to and the permanence of black bodies in the riverside territories of the sertão — the healing through the sacred food and the leaves used in the baths and rituals of the terreiros — , which materializes Afro-Brazilian art objects that create visual narratives.  

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The making of the works|ebós, using the earth and the black body as images, movement, transe|to, protection and healing, takes as a reference the poetics found in the orality and resistance of Afro-ribeirinhos and Afro-sertanejos black peoples, as well as as in the leaves enchanted by Ọ̀sányìn and in the votive food.

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The artifacts used in religious rituals, manipulated collectively, carry ancestry, affections and meanings that overflow knowledge. Such practices, taught from generation to generation through orality, allow everyone to be co-participants in the process and aesthetic experience.

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The investigation was carried out in the terreiros Ilè Odé oké Asè Ògòdó, located in the Terra do Sul neighborhood, on the outskirts of the city of Petrolina-PE, and in the Ilè òmò Lòsí Asè Odé Tafarajó, on the border with the Quidé neighborhood, where part of the history of the black population of Juazeiro-BA, in the hinterland of São Francisco.  

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The process of gentrification of the two cities culminated in the execution and denial of the Afro-ribeirinha-sertaneja identities, whose process of racialization of the bodies that transit in its beaten earth, from where the first black families of the region were settled and planted their Òrìşàs, made it impossible to such bodies to recognize themselves as diasporic materiality and, consequently, to exercise their beliefs, travel on the fresh waters of the Opará River and dispatch their Ebós in gratitude.  

Therefore, it is necessary to curse. Take back power and ensure a fertile future in the course that plans the end of the world.

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we believe

To the poet Nei Lopes for the poem “stories to lullaby Cassul-Buanga”

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we believe.

when walls

come apart

with the same lightness

of cotton clouds,

our elders

coming from the bottom

of the times

will smile in peace.

we believe.

the announced miracle

will be happening.

And in the written scripture

of pre-announcement,

of a new time,

new paragraphs

will open.

we believe.

in authorship

of this new story.

And in this new record

the millennial letter

will merge with the new

spelling of the youngest.

Conceição Evaristo