Black Art in Brazil: Expressions of Identity

Introduction

I N T R O D U C T I O N At a 1997 gallery talk in London, a young Black British woman asked Yinka Shonibare if he had a problem with being black. He replied that he didn’t have a problem with being black, but he did have a problem with other people’s ideas of what being black should mean for his work. (Hynes 2001, 65) This encounter involving British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare speaks to this book’s core question: What does black art look like? The relationship between race and art is relevant to production from various parts of the world. However, the way that discourse on racially based artistic categories has evolved, as well as the implications surrounding race-related artistic terms, often differs from one country to the next and even between regions. Art institutions, critics, art historians, and curators are highly influential in shaping public understandings of the correlation between race and art. Of particular importance is an audience’s expectations of what black art should look like, which may trump the artist’s attempt, if any, to express blackness in his or her work. The fact that some artists embrace race-related labels while others reject them reflects the diversity of artistic creativity and identity around the world. With regard to Brazil, the relatively recent interest in black art1 prompted anthropologist and curator Marta Heloísa Leuba Salum, at the turn of the twenty-first century, to state that “Afro-Brazilian art [was] a contemporary phenomenon” (2000, 113) (italics are mine). Her characterization is not wholly surprising given that most black Brazilian art falls into an interstice between studies of Modern and Contemporary Latin American art history and African art history, the latter of which has only gained international momentum and serious academic attention since 1950. One could easily argue that the relatively embryonic state of discourse on black Brazilian art, increasingly discussed as “Afro-Brazilian art” nationally and internationally in the past few decades, is an indication of both its perceived value to national artistic production and Afro-Brazilians’ largely subordinate position in Brazilian society. Regardless, such cursory hypotheses do not begin to address a 2 Black Art in Brazil number of much deeper issues. Comprehensive exploration of black Brazilian art reveals that this body of work is innately enmeshed in a highly complex and interwoven series of social, economic, political, and historical factors that extend beyond the purview of a solely racially based discussion. The art cannot be extracted from its polyvalent environment and must be examined against this framework. Intersections of Art, Politics, and Race: 1900–1950 The twentieth century encompassed numerous significant social and political developments in Brazil. It bridged the 1888 abolition of slavery and the 1988 centenary, which became a time to reflect on the country’s African heritage and the current status of its African descendants. Over the course of the century, the population endured a political rollercoaster that included both democratic administrations and more than one dictatorship. In addition to the disparate types of rule, mid-century, the government relocated the capital from Rio de Janeiro to the recently constructed city of Brasília—a symbol of the “new” Brazil. Of course, throughout the decades, artistic expression was also almost always affected by changes that took place in the social and political arenas. The surge of cultural nationalism that occurred in the first half of the twentieth century largely molded the national racial ideology that existed well into the second half of the century, and even affected the trajectory of race-related artistic production. In the first decades of the 1900s, Brazil experienced a growth in cultural nationalism due, in part, to social and economic changes brought about by the abolition of slavery in 1888 (Franco 1967, 69–102). Several states had sizeable Afro-Brazilian populations, including the Northeastern region of Bahia, which was the strongest center of African influence due to its sea trade with West Africa and religious exchange with Nigeria, in particular (Barata 1957, 55–56; Matory 2005, 46–47, 118–119; Pierson 1942, 239). Yet, even after the abolition of slavery, the white, European-influenced portion of the population remained dominant socially, culturally, and politically. This hegemony extended to national artistic production. For example, Brazil ’s young white writers, artists, dancers, and musicians were active participants in the move away from European cultural affinities, fusing modern or international styles with decidedly local subjects in the 1920s (Ades 1989...