{"id":10442,"date":"2024-03-18T08:00:45","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T08:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcostastudio.pt\/clients\/waau\/site\/\/?p=10442"},"modified":"2024-03-18T11:56:18","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T11:56:18","slug":"ayrson-heraclito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcostastudio.pt\/clients\/waau\/site\/2024\/03\/18\/ayrson-heraclito\/","title":{"rendered":"Ayrson Her\u00e1clito"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Author: Laura Burocco<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

You present yourself as an artist, Candombl\u00e9 Og\u00e3 of the Jeje-Mahi nation, professor at the Federal University of Rec\u00f4ncavo da Bahia and curator. Could you please tell us about these multiple facets and how they fit \u2013 if at all \u2013 with each other?<\/h4>

All these multiple facets that I perform are corelated, everything is combined. In fact, this aspect of separating all scopes of human action is something I usually don’t do. As an Og\u00e31<\/sup>, I am not just a Candombl\u00e9 initiate, and Candombl\u00e9 is not just a religion, but it is also a philosophy, it is a science, a way of thinking about the world. As a professor, I have always preferred to, instead of teaching methodologies, introduce students to a more in-depth, and above all, anti-colonial knowledge. As an artist, and as a curator all these aspects come together, since I understand art from a very broad perspective, outside of the standards established by the Western school of thought. These diverse functions are connected as an unfractionated whole, as it was always thought of by the cultures of the pre-colonial original peoples and African peoples, who came enslaved to the Americas.<\/p>

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You started your career as a painter and now work with different languages from installation to performance, photography, and video. Could you tell us a little about the beginning of your career and which of the different languages you have developed throughout your career feels the closest to you?<\/h4>

I started as a painter. The color, the surface, the idea of pictorial layer, this whole universe of painting initially attracted me a lot. The preparation of paints, the study of materials, what we call the \u201cpainting kitchen\u201d. This really fascinated me during my undergraduate studies, where I studied theories and techniques, especially of painting.<\/p>

I stopped painting for political reasons. Because painting has always been the fastest vehicle to be absorbed by the art system. To this day, painting is, internationally, the language, the expression, that is more accessible in a way, more traditional. I needed to experience other dimensions of art. I needed to experience space, the idea of environmental art, installations, ambient spaces, and I also needed to break away from all of that, and enter, precisely, this universe of rituals, these ritual performances that I do.<\/p>

Currently, what attracts me the most are undoubtedly these performative rituals that I develop. But I think the entire construction of my image is based on this beginning, painting. All photographic, videographic, installation and performative production, refers to these pictorial issues that have always attracted me greatly. I have always been an artist of the pictorial, much more than of linearity. I always sought to reach different senses of the observer for the reception to be greater, synesthetic, passing through different senses.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Portrait of the artist. Photo by Tiago SanT\u2019Ana<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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As a black artist and scholar in Brazil, do you think you have experienced greater difficulties than a white artist on your path to recognition within the arts and academia circuit, in Brazil, as well as, in the world, and if so, would you like to share some of your observations about this matter? Do you believe that things are changing?<\/h4>

Yes, without a doubt, especially as an artist and researcher, an artist linked to academia for a long time, my research was very limited to the folkloric label. I was an academic artist, an artist who was carrying out research within the university and at the same time my work, as it related to and had as its main reference this universe of Afro-Brazilian culture, it was classified as folkloric research. I never had any anthropological interest, and my approach was always very poetic, so this didn’t have much space, and when space was given, it was destined to anthropology. So, I was often invited to participate in exhibitions, and present my work in anthropological and ethnographical museums.<\/p>

What changed in Brazil was precisely this whole uprising that came with the Lula government, and which brought the ethnic-racial reparation policies in Brazil. The affirmative policies of reparations ended up bringing more black people to universities, not only students but also teachers. So, the university became more colorful with more references. So, nowadays we have very prominent university professors who, instead of merely teaching Western aesthetics and philosophy, also have been working with African aesthetics and philosophies, or from the perspective of Indigenous peoples. These are achievements that I think we will never go back on.<\/p>

In parallel to these policies, decolonial and anti-colonial thinking, the critique of coloniality itself, have put this entire Brazilian and international academic tradition in check, so we are deconstructing, as well as reviewing all of these issues. But without a doubt today we have a larger space, and our research is not only being seen, from this anthropological perspective or from a folkloric culture.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Your work brings to the art space ancestral forces that are connected to the invisible. Imposing a reflection about a colonial and genocidal past, you became one of the most prominent artists in Brazil in the making of healing rituals. How do you understand, and experience, this transition from the terreiro<\/i> to the gallery, or museum?<\/h4>

The universe of the terreiro2<\/sup> <\/i>, I must emphasize, is not just a religious universe, but a way of looking at the world from a pre-colonial perspective. All this culture, all the modernity of African and the original peoples of pre-colonial America, was reduced and was plundered by colonial violence. I find in the terreiro<\/i>, and not only in the terreiro <\/i>but also in spaces of aquilombamento, <\/i>a place where much of this knowledge was preserved, or was transformed in a way that recognizes its truly significant values.<\/i><\/p>

Nowadays, when I enter the world of art, I think that I am not alone and that there is a great generation of artists, who came up with this idea of art-ritual, art as a strategy not only of contemplation, of producing beauty, of being just an idea, an abstraction created by an artist.<\/p>

This idea of the terreiro<\/i> being in the gallery is also to take objects into these spaces that are not just objects, but also subjects. These are objects that function as an amulet. They are objects of enchantment. This is quite important because it pressures the very meaning of these spaces and these art systems today. I think that galleries, institutions and museums are also decolonizing themselves, and this is important because museums and galleries are not just spaces for objects, but also spaces for subjects. Subjects with different forms, different meanings, and different ways of presenting themselves, not just the human way. I think that each of my works acts on a space, on the observer, like a form of magic, a form of enchantment.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cAs Ma\u0303os do Epo\u0302\u201d, video frame, 2007<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Art and religion are not separate but intertwined in everyday life, drinking from nature\u2019s surveyance, oracles and the comunidades de santo<\/i> (\u201ccommunities of saint\u201d), the aesthetics of rituals, the ethics of respect for the sacred and secrets. What is the limit to be established between performance as a public act and secrecy? I am thinking about your discomfort with Pierre Verger’s work in the terreiros<\/i> in Bahia, for example…<\/h4>

Yes, art and religion, they are not separate. It is this return to the pre-colonial past that is important to us. It is important to understand that art, religion, philosophy, everything is interconnected, and that it was the West that rationalized and compartmentalized it.<\/p>

What I claim is that we must consider that there are several art systems and several ways of understanding art and these art systems cannot be unique either. There are ways of making art, which follow a kind of visibility regime, which is different from this Western visibility regime. There are things you can show, there are things you cannot show, there are things you can evoke and there are things you cannot evoke. In that I think lies the big limit: respect. There is also another important issue, that I think is fundamental to raise: you must talk about what you know, what you belong to, and what you have the authority and right to talk about. You can’t talk about another culture. Hence my great criticism of these human sciences that for a long time were used as inhumane sciences. It is important to humanize these sciences that were very inhumane, such as anthropology, such as sociology. Because these sciences served the control of one culture over another, the consolidation of prejudices and, above all, spoliation and extractivism. You take away from that culture, and you benefit from a culture that doesn’t belong to you. All of this tradition is important.<\/p>

Today we must position ourselves in relation to these practices that permeate in a certain way, these other understandings of art, these other understandings of artistic production. The artistic production of communities and indigenous peoples is completely different from Western artistic production. We can never compare these two, and for a long time the art system has been absorbing these productions, but within niches of anthropological, ethnographic, etcetera.<\/p>

That’s why I think we must have great respect and know how to speak, who can speak, what has to be hidden, especially when we go through the sacred sphere, not everything can be revealed, otherwise it ceases to be the sacred, secret. My work is also to build and present all this understanding that I learned as a Candombl\u00e9 initiate, about what can be presented and what cannot be presented.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cSegredos Internos\u201d, Bahia Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Photo by Marcio Lima<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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You are one of the artists selected for the 35th Bienal de S\u00e3o Paulo. The multi-sensory installation Floresta de Infinitos<\/i>, in partnership with the poet and musician Tigan\u00e1 Santana, establishes a connection of enchantments with forces coming from African (in Brazil), Afro-Brazilian and indigenous entities, such as Oxossi, Mutalamb\u00f4, Otolu, Ossayin, Katend\u00ea, Agu\u00e9<\/i>; and the Caboclos<\/i>. Can you tell us more about this project?<\/h4>

The Floresta de Infinitos<\/i> was a space that Tigan\u00e1 and I understood and created, and raises a series of questions that we have been working on in other works. First, the use of art as a powerful element in experiencing our memories, especially our ancestral memories. It is a space, a bamboo forest. Bamboo is associated with a deity called Ians\u00e34<\/sup> <\/i> who, within the universe of the original culture of the Bantu peoples, is called Bamburucema<\/i>, hence the name bamboo, which also has a very great power over spirits, over the disembodied. And the bamboo grove is where we carry and place this spiritual body of each initiate.<\/p>

Each initiate has a physical body and a spiritual body. When he makes the passage, when he transmigrates, when he transmutes, when he leaves the earth and goes to \u00c0iy\u00e9<\/i>, to \u00d2run<\/i>, which is the deep spiritual universe, that is not separate, it is interconnected, but it is another dimension5<\/sup>, this representation of his symbolic body also must go through funeral rituals that we call Axex\u00ea<\/i>. Each nation has a specific name, in Ketu it is Axex\u00ea<\/i> which is quite popular here in Bahia. So, the Bamboo Forest is an important place where many rituals are carried out precisely because of this relationship with the deities Oy\u00e1 and Ians\u00e3.\u00a0 Tigan\u00e1 and I decided to make a forest, in honor of these spirits, these disembodied ones, these eguns<\/i> in a certain way.<\/p>

The eguns <\/i>are these spirits, these disembodied people who had a deep relationship in their lives with the idea of the forest. So, we chose to make these beings reappear through digital technologies and artificial intelligence within this immersive space that is this bamboo forest that we call the Floresta de Infinitos<\/i>,<\/b> because they are infinite, they never die, they just changed dimensions of state.<\/p>

So, we chose a series of orix\u00e1s<\/i>, babalorix\u00e1s6<\/sup><\/i>, important people part of the Candombl\u00e9, from all nations, the Ketu nation, Banto, Congo, Angola, the caboclos – all are beings who have already died, have already disembodied – and who have a relationship with the forest either they are children of Ox\u00f3ssi7<\/sup><\/i> or they are children of the Od\u00e9s8<\/sup><\/i>, the hunters.<\/p>

In addition to these anthropomorphic deities that appear in these forests, we also chose biomorphic deities, which are birds, rivers, reptiles that are endangered, or that have already disappeared completely, so the spirits of these beings also appear in this forest. In addition to these spirits, there are also a series of activists who died in the struggle, who gave their lives and were killed precisely by the violence of beings who want to destroy the forests, extractivists who want to end the forest, who want to remove all resources, deforest the forests. Chico Mendes9<\/sup>, Dom, Bruno10<\/sup>, activists who lost their lives as several others, like \u201cThe Man of the Hole\u201d11<\/sup>, as he was popularly known, who was the last being of a society that became extinct. This entire community and society ended with his death. The Floresta dos Infinitos<\/i> also tells us that the most powerful way to be grateful, to pay homage to these beings, these spirits, is to create possibilities with art, so that they are never forgotten, they are always remembered. The best tribute we can offer to these beings is memory, remembering them.<\/p>

While we are participating in the S\u00e3o Paulo Biennial – this historic biennial because it is a black biennial, practically the majority of the artists are black, and the curators are black – we also invite them. It is not just Tigan\u00e1 Santana\u2019s or Ayrson H\u00e9raclito\u2019s artwork, but also of a series of very important personalities that we invited, such as M\u00e3e Estela de Ox\u00f3ssi12<\/sup>, Jo\u00e3ozinho da Gom\u00e9ia13<\/sup> and M\u00e3e Edna, a series of very important characters [ part of the Candombl\u00e9 ] to also enter this universe of art.\u00a0 We are constantly striving to bring other perspectives, to bring representation to this universe, to make this universe of art more plural and democratic, representative of the different cultures and the different understandings about art that exist in Brazil and in the world.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cDivisor 3\u201d, Mercosur Biennial, 2001. Photo by Edson Varas<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In July of 2023 you opened the solo show “Healing Technologies and Affections \/ T\u1ecdJU ATI AW\u1ecdN IM\u1ecd-\u1eb9R\u1ecd IWOSAN” curated by Marissa L\u00f4bo and Ivana Marjanovi\u0107 at the gallery A Kunstraum Innsbruck, in western Austria. The exhibition promotes the encounter of Yoruba ancestry present in the Afro-diasporic body with healing and purification technologies. Which makes me think of indigenous S\u00e1mi academic Rauna Koukkanem\u2019s definition of what she calls the West\u2019s \u2018epistemic ignorance\u2019. Do you think the European public has the capacity to receive and understand these works?<\/h4>

I think it is important to present these works in Europe regardless of whether or not the European audience has the capacity to recognize and understand all the technologies of care and healing, all these technologies of connection with nature that have been in practice outside of Europe, for a long time. I think it is particularly important that it\u2019s presented by contemporary artists, not just within a museum of anthropology and\/or ethnology but, mostly, by contemporary artists. I think it’s quite important. Europe is also not just for Europeans, today in Europe we have a very large migrant community. And this exhibition also had them as a very big focus. There are some projects that focus on immigrants, which is also a way of supporting these immigration policies, of working with and also caring for these immigrants, many of whom are African, Latino, Asian. This exhibition had a close relationship with the black community that lives in Innsbruck in the interior of Austria, and with the queer community. It is also important to take this type of knowledge to communities that are also in Europe and are not necessarily European because they are subjected to the phenomenon of immigration. It is important that Europeans see this type of thinking in art museums, and not just in ethnology and ethnography museums. I think this is fundamental because it can help to reduce this ignorance in relation to the rest of the world, as they have always said, they are the center and outside of them, is the rest.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cBarrueco colar\u201d, from the series \"Sangue Vegetal\", 2005<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The same could be asked in relation to the collective exhibition \u201cHot Spot – Caring for a Burni World\u201d curated by Gerardo Mosquera, at the Galleria Nazionale<\/h4>

Yes, and it is also very important to highlight that this space has been deconstructing its most traditional curatorial conceptions. Its director is a person that is very advanced in terms of understanding and practicing this critique of coloniality itself.<\/p>

Without a doubt the exhibition is an invitation to have this very important [ healing ] space in an institution and affirm that the world has to be taken care of; that the planet has to be cleaned with these care and healing technologies, which are part of our collection of technologies and action to heal the wounds opened by colonial violence. I think it is very important to hold this type of art, this type of performance, this type of ritual in these spaces.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In your extensive career you also participated in the Luanda Triennale, in 2010, in the tenth edition, in 2015, of the \u2018Rencontres de Bamako Biennale Africaine de la Photographie\u2019, in Dakar where you were a resident artist for Videobrasil and Raw Material. What is your experience attending major art events, or presenting at exhibitions, in the South, particularly on the African continent, and in the North? What do you think – if you think – is different?<\/h4>

For me it was extremely important to participate, to have the privilege of participating in this African art circuit. Because it is not only in recent times that African countries are fighting to deconstruct these prejudices that Europe has built towards African artistic and cultural production. Participating in these events for me was very important, first because people don’t have even the slightest idea how big are African cities such as Kinshasa, Lagos, Dakar or Bamako. We have a very limited idea [ of the reality of these places] which ends up reinforcing all the precariousness of these cities and these spaces that very recently became independent, and that are still not completely independent, due to a sort of very large neo-colonization in the area of interests, of market interests by some European countries, as well as other places, that still act in these African countries. Africa was very important, because Africa legitimized me, not only as a Brazilian artist, but as an interesting artist from the African diaspora in the world, and this opened many doors for me, including doors in Europe, in addition to opening doors in Africa.\u00a0<\/p>

I am an artist who participated in these important events, these biennials, these important moments in Africa where this idea that the West created, of a Primitive Africa was being deconstructed, reaffirming this Contemporary Africa, alive, pulsating, which is not closed, which is not merely tribal, of large centers, because we have no idea how big these African cities are. People who live here in [ South ] America think that S\u00e3o Paulo, Mexico City, New York are the great references, and when you arrive in Africa you see the size of these cities and cultures and how important these events are for the appreciation of African art outside of Africa. So Afro-Brazilian art, Afro-Caribbean art and African art in general, owe a lot to these policies of affirmation of a contemporary Africa, of contemporary artistic production.<\/p>

So, it was very important for me to be invited to the continent, I know most of the great curators, I have had the pleasure of working with many of them, and I still have the pleasure of continuing to work with some of them. I think it’s very important to have the opportunity to go to Africa, to go to the East, looking at these spaces, and the continent, not with a colonial gaze but instead with that of contemporaneity, a gaze of today.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cA flor do velho\u201d, 2013<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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You worked together with H\u00e9lio Menezes in curating the seminal exhibition Hist\u00f3rias Afro-Atl\u00e2nticas<\/i> at MASP and Instituto Tomie Ohtake in 2018 and in 2021-2022 at the Museum of Fine Arts, MFAH – Houston, USA. What was this curatorship experience like? What do you think is the role of the curator in the contemporary reality of the art world?<\/h4>

It was very important to work on the Hist\u00f3rias Afro-Atl\u00e2nticas<\/i> (Afro-Atlantic Stories) project, that we initially did in Brazil. It was very important to present a curatorial concept that involved all these Atlantic relationships, this relationship between Africa and America, based on a Brazilian experience.<\/p>

We did not participate in the adaptations required for the exhibition to travel. We were invited, but in reality, the ones who worked on these adaptations were MASP along with other American curators. Without a doubt this itinerary across the United States publicized and created a very broad window of interest for the exhibition, even if it turned into something else. Many works have not travelled, like mine, which was aimed precisely at a group of peripheral artists of the 1960s and 1970s, who were very important in the construction of contemporary black art based on this Atlantic experience. Unfortunately, this part of the exhibition did not travel, neither did other important and seminal artists. The exhibition took on other perspectives, other subjects, other dimensions, but this curatorial action was very important.<\/p>

I always say that I would really like artists like Madman, who is an important sculptor associated with the city of Cachoeira where I work, or like Rubem14<\/sup>, like Master Didi15<\/sup>, to be understood as matrices for the construction of black contemporary art. This is a big dream and I think we still have a lot to build on. I always say that I would really like to see Bob Marley or Jimmy Hendrix be as acclaimed in the United States as experimental artists, fundamental artists for contemporary art like John Cage, for example, was and is. I think there are still many things that need to be changed, including within diasporic America itself, so that we can build black contemporary art without these direct influences that are associated with Europe or this traditional thought and this colonial understanding of arts.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The acclaimed monographic exhibition YOR\u00d9B\u00c1IANO at the Rio Art Museum – MAR and at the Pinacoteca de S\u00e3o Paulo, curated by Marcelo Campos, Amanda Bonan and Ana Maria Maia, presented 63 works created between 1994 and 2022. Through what it calls a \u201cdiasporic cultural body\u201d, the exhibition affirmed the complexity and richness of African ancestral knowledge that terreiros<\/i> and quilombos<\/i> helped keep alive in Brazil. The concept is based on three organic materials: sugar, meat and palm oil. Could you tell us more about the development of this concept in your work?<\/h4>

The YOR\u00d9B\u00c1IANO exhibition was very interesting, first because it was a way of bringing together, outside the state of Bahia, a production that I have been producing here since the nineties, and that people don’t know in its entirety. So, it was very important for my career, to be able to present it in Rio de Janeiro first, and then in S\u00e3o Paulo, with such sensitive curators as Marcelo, Amanda and Ana Maria Maia.<\/p>

The exhibition organizes this idea of this Afro-diasporic cultural body. I started working with these organic materials to think and associate a little with the constitution of this cultural body, this poetic body. This body was born precisely within the context of sugar monoculture and colonial slavery practices. So it is on the farms, in the sugarcane mills, and in the Casa-grande and Senzala<\/i>, that this body begins to configure itself, sugar speaks precisely from this initial moment of this body.<\/p>

This sugar is not sweet, it is very bitter, it is not white, it is not refined, this sugar is affected by a lot of blood and suffering from the African people who came here subjugated. But sugar has this dimension of remembrance of this colonial slave past in Brazil, mainly in the Northeast of Brazil and in Rec\u00f4ncavo, where I live and work. There are several works that try to create a bit of this atmosphere of what that period was like. It’s a kind of genealogical work.<\/p>

Afterwards, this body that is born in this context is resistant. So, I opted for charque<\/i> meat, a dried meat that is made by assembling other meats.\u00a0 It was not perishable, not fresh, you could put it in tubs with salt or with oil, and it could take a while to be consumed. Then I started making several objects and performances bringing this flesh as the protagonist of the materiality of this Afro-diasporic body.\u00a0 But this Afro-diasporic body is alive within my grammar of poetics, of meanings, this body is made alive through vital fluids that I associated with palm oil (dend\u00ea<\/i>), it is precisely this ancestral blood that crossed the Atlantic through the holds of slave ships and reached us here as a very important matter for Afro-Brazilian cultures.\u00a0 Palm oil (dend\u00ea<\/i>) has the dimension of being this ancestral blood, but also of being the golden sperm, which fertilizes this cultural body and the saliva that lubricates communication, speech, the power of speech in Afro-Brazilian communities, and the processes of transmission of their knowledge and wisdom.<\/p>

I started thinking about these three materials within the construction of this Afro-diasporic body. Currently, I am returning to these materials, but I always thought of these materials not as materials that I could create didactic information about history from, these materials are freely appropriated, and poetically redefined by me precisely to enable an initiation into this contemporary artistic universe that is an invention based on [my] research, and also based on this ever-comprehensive sensory perception. [In my work] I always wanted to achieve not just one meaning, and that is why food, smells, sounds, immersion, being able to get inside the work has always fascinated me.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cMarca\u00e7\u00e3o a ferro, performance transmuta\u00e7\u00e3o da carne\u201d, Sesc Pomp\u00e9ia, S\u00e3o Paulo, 2005<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Could you elaborate about older works such as the the project Moqueca: The Atlantic Condor, from 2002 and Funfum from 2012?<\/h4>

The work Moqueca<\/i> is precisely that. It is a great offering called O Condor Atl\u00e2ntico: A Moqueca<\/i>.\u00a0 It was when I started to work more explicitly with this idea of food within the Afro-Brazilian thought. Food is a great offering, and what is the offering? An offering is a gift you give to deities, and deities are often elements of nature. So that’s why you offer gifts to nature, and food is the greatest gift that nature offers to human beings. And as we understand nature within this dimension of the sacred, of divinity, food is very important. <\/i><\/p>

Cond\u00f4r do Atl\u00e2ntico<\/i> referred to a Moqueca <\/i>which is a typical dish made with palm oil and with onion, tomatoes, and fish. Within the tradition of Brazilian abolitionist poetry, the birds of freedom appeared and are called condors. Several abolitionist poets always referred to freedom as the flight of a great condor. The condor brings freedom, it is the metaphor, it is the most common image. So, freedom is a bird.\u00a0 And then to think about this issue of Atlantic freedom, to do justice to this holocaust, this Atlantic prison, I chose the stingray, because the stingray is precisely a fish that is a large bird of the sea, and we prepare and serve a stingray as a metaphor for this Atlantic bird, this Atlantic condor, hence the name the Atlantic Condor.<\/p>

And the work Funfum also talks about the passing\u2019s ceremony of an important priestess, who was the oldest daughter of Obalua\u00ea <\/i>who lived in Cachoeira, m\u00e3e Estelita16<\/sup>. Obalua\u00ea17<\/sup><\/i> is a deity associated with illnesses and cures, and m\u00e3e Estelita was one of the oldest, she was over one hundred and six years old when she died, and she held an important position in the Sisterhood of Good Death.<\/p>

Funfum also has to do with food because funfum<\/i> is white in Yoruba, and the food served in these white rituals is associated with the deity Oxal\u00e1<\/i> who does not eat palm oil for mythological reasons. In these Funfum rituals, palm oil is replaced by olive oil, or these white vegetable oils that are not dyed like palm oil.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Ayrson Her\u00e1clito, \u201cO Sacudimento da Maison des Esclave em Gor\u00e9e, Senegal\", 2015<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Your works seem to me to be works of long gestation that will be nourished over time. The Bori series has been developing from 2008-11; Senhora do Ros\u00e1rio dos Pretos (\u201cLady of the Rosary of the Blacks\u201d) project, between 2002-2022; the video installation As M\u00e3os do Ep\u00f4 (\u201cThe hands of Ep\u00f4\u201d), between 2007-21; Segredos Internos (\u201cInternal Secrets\u201d) project, between 1994-2010; and the series Transmuta\u00e7\u00e3o da Carne \u2013 2000-2021. Could you tell us more about these projects?<\/h4>

The Bori<\/i> is also a very important work where I talk about food. Food is an important material to feed not only the physical body but also the spiritual body and Bo<\/i> means offering, and Ori<\/i> is head. So, this is an initiation ritual that I created, my Bori<\/i> is completely original, free, there is no such ritual in Candombl\u00e9, it is a poetic resignification of what I do, of the ritual itself, but to say that we must feed our head because it is in our head that lies our happiness and our misfortune. We have to keep our heads always strong, always nourished and not just nutritional food, but energy food too.\u00a0 This work talks a little about this, and also talks about the gastronomic predilections of different deities. Ogum<\/i> eats yam, Oxal\u00e1<\/i> white corn, Oxum<\/i> eats food made with black-eyed peas and eggs called Omolokum<\/i>. It was a way to present these African, Afro-Brazilian deities, of Ketu origin and Banto origin, through their food.<\/p>

Just like I did with the film As M\u00e3os do Ep\u00f4<\/i>, I try to create a ballet with the signs that these deities, when incorporated into the body of an initiate, make with their hands. It’s a whole study of signs that tells a bit of the story of the divinity, of the actions, of the deeds, of the characteristics of the divinity. Candombl\u00e9 is an integral art, it is a great opera, and a ritual of a Xir\u00ea18<\/sup><\/i>, as we call this celebration of all the divinities that always takes place in a circular shape. So, when you go to a Candombl\u00e9, the first thing you see is the Xir\u00ea<\/i>, which is precisely this wheel of deities. And in this circle, you see these deities all dressed up dancing. Dancing is very important. In Candombl\u00e9 there is dance, there are visual arts also in clothes, objects, sculptures, the symbols that all these activities carry, there is music, there is the performance itself, there is food. So, it is an integral art. Candombl\u00e9 is an integral experience, it goes beyond opera because it is also gastronomic.<\/p>

Segredos Internos<\/i> is a work that takes us back to that first sugar moment of my research into the colonial past.<\/p>

All of these artistic processes that I developed, try to create this understanding of this Afro-diasporic body and how it relates to temporal dimensions that are not linear but from a multidimensional, spherical time dimension or even a \u201ctime spiraling\u201d19<\/sup>, as Leda Martins said20<\/sup>, from other experiences, from other paths, these works end up taking on this universe of understanding, and artistic production that I do.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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