Black Art in Brazil: Expressions of Identity by Kimberly L. Cleveland (review)

“What does black art look like?” asks Kimberly Cleveland on the opening page of Black Art in Brazil: Expressions of Identity. The question may seem anachronistic, particularly when read in light of recent approaches that focus on the formation of racial identities and subjectivities in the visual field, as opposed to their semiotic articulation through artworks. Yet Cleveland is insistent not only on the question’s relevance, but on foregrounding “black art” as a conceptual framework to replace the problematic and almost universally-accepted term “Afro-Brazilian art.” Utilizing analyses of Brazilian exhibition histories and artistic movements, an overview of black Brazilian art history, and the careers and personal biographies of five carefully selected artists, Black Art in Brazil provides a convincing and long overdue interrogation of “Afro-Brazilian art” as a descriptor. In its place, while forwarding “black art” as a replacement for “Afro-Brazilian art,” Cleveland provides an interesting case study of the promises and potential pitfalls of approaching racial identities in artworks through a semiotic lens, particularly in a study contrasting distinct popular approaches to racial identity in Brazil and the United States.

For Cleveland, the major problem with contemporary scholarship on “black art” in Brazil has been that as “Brazilian scholars expanded their use of the term Afro-Brazilian art to include almost all work produced by African-descendant artists, they did not necessarily broaden the term’s related aesthetic … the general public still has a rather limited visual vocabulary that they use to understand that a work conveys ‘blackness’” (141). This “limited visual vocabulary” largely comes from restrictive definitions of “Afro-Brazilian art” forwarded by Mariano Carneiro da Cunha (1983) and Kabengele Munanga (2000), summarized as “a category of production composed of religious art with a strong African influences and most secular work by African-descendant artists” (85).

Using Saussurean semiotic analysis, Cleveland identifies specific cases where artworks were unable to convey “blackness,” as audiences in both Brazil and the United States were unfamiliar with the symbolism used by certain artists. While Cleveland does differentiate American and Brazilian audiences’ knowledge of Afro-Brazilian symbols, some engagement with current reception theory could strengthen her approach, which at times risks an uncritical and homogenous idea of “the viewer.” Still, Cleveland seizes upon a disconnect between prevailing definitions and symbolism of Afro-Brazilian art. She then proposes “black art” as an alternative category, seeking to reclaim the term from its “original, negative undertones” (17). The remainder of Black Art in Brazil looks “at how select artists identify with the Afro-Brazilian art label” while also examining “the significance of these individuals’ secular production with regard to the popular realm and how the works convey ideas of blackness” (17).

Cleveland constructs her iterative conception of “blackness” through an ever-changing language of signs and symbols employed by the artists she highlights. Using Chapter 1 to relay the intertwined history of national discourses of racial identity, ideology, and artistic production in which “the public still associates black ethnicity with black religion, and black religion with black art” (22), she spends the following five chapters tracing how blackness is conveyed through the works of five artists, reading their work against their participation in large-scale exhibitions of Afro-Brazilian art, and their personal feelings on the “Afro-Brazilian art” label. Chapter 2 traces the life and artwork of the influential Afro-Brazilian activist and philosopher Abdias do Nascimento. Though he used Candomblé symbolism in his paintings, Nascimento was not actually an initiate, a point Cleveland uses to note the implicit ownership granted of sacred forms granted to black Brazilians, even in a secular context. Nascimento’s racial and religious identities are contrasted with the life and work of Ronaldo Rego in Chapter 3. Rego’s installations are informed by his knowledge as an Umbanda priest, while his use of Umbanda symbolism complicates assumed ties between racial identity and religious practice, as Rego is white.

In Chapter 4, Cleveland positions the photography of Eustáquio Neves...