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Carolina Gracindo
São Paulo University [USP]

I WANT TO GO ON THE HIGH SEA (2021)

I want to go on the high seas, undo the moorings of what I am not. To dance baião with iridescent shoals, uncapturable. Swimmers running away from the un-told stories. Keepers of tales about exploration of the flesh, rebuilders of themselves and of lost worlds. I want to reach the dark floor of the ocean depths, naked beside Wallace and David, in the Repertory, not yet told. I go about naked, timeless, of future and past. I want to be an interpellating sweat, of Eshuziac and beautiful nudity. So that in the pitch the melanin of the Amefrican skin fluoresces. Seus tons cintilantes e escamados de verde e lilás.

Its shimmering, scaly shades of green and lilac.

In the shoal there are no opposites… it’s always on the move. Redoing yourself and the surrounding waters. Its malemolence evades evolutionary predations, smug nineteenth-century photographs, black types, tropical landscapes, slavery, beautiful views. My way of rowing is unknown to pseudoscientists. It survives in the joint walk of the multiple selves. We are not alone. In the shoal I take care of you, I’m one with you and we choreograph the song umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu to get into the flow.

After the danger goes bye we set out in all directions, each showing an unparalleled beauty. The autonomous ceramics of Ana das Carrancas remain, far from the prows, showing partnership and communion. That’s where the real curatorship comes from: the clays of Nanã, the wet-nurses, nannies, the syncretic choirs of Sant’Anas. It comes from the survivals and the fullness of exchanges.

But humanity is sick. Careless of its nature. Forgetting to feel: eat, smell, touch, see and hear what really matters. “From here I saw what happened and I cry. I saw they looking at me. I saw they prayed far from home. I saw a scar under tree. I saw a bird sing alone”.

Will it be possible to retrace the path of those who landed in this backyard? Discover the missing names in that framed oil on canvas? Migrate towards the South, against the systemic colonial hurricane? Is it possible to reach the heights, through Ananse’s web and there to hear stories of healing and shared freedom, unconditioned by the exploration of the other-self? Overcoming private walls, institutional fences, segregating formations, pandemic isolation and capital logics? Recognize the oral dimension of science, the knowledge that passes through coexistence? Even without formal records, dialogue is the source of strong, rich and permissive water. Just open your ears to hear. But those who do not risk getting wet do not realize that it is possible to swim beyond Conventions Island.

It is worth taking care not to fall into perfect worlds, mythological candidacies… illusions. “Eshu killed a bird yesterday, with the stone he threw today”. The dystopias of now have germinated from the planting of utopias. Self-criticism is an endless exercise, and tomorrow there will still be branches to prune, memories to heal. In this world there is no purity of blood or ideal. Nature is multiple. Many seeds will wake up to celebrate differences in petal color and fruit flavor. The idealizations run away from the daily demands, from winter-summer, from bread and butter, torn thirst, dryness of the ground, from the president oblivious to the price of bread. Perfect love massacres the lines of wrinkles, the gray shine of the wires and the pleasures of living like this. The young model, the standard of beauty, has no likes because the time of hegemonic narratives has cost dearly, and we are still paying.

On the way to university, a new jet black generation listens to the hit I can’t breathe. They read, produce, defend, consume, make noise and make the noise grow in front of the silence sign in the gallery, in Jardins. They produce more because they do not wait for “the galleries and concert halls to open”. They spray graffiti, lick, make memes, dance steps, flash-mobs and ask the police inspectors: “Who ordered the killing of Marielle?”. They paint brown paper black and navigate outside of November’s themed exhibitions, because you can’t play to be black one day and white the next. They fly on the wings of the guira-una and swim in the philosophical shoal of the Global South, to speak more about blue than about everything they don’t let me forget.

Now, to talk about these things… rise… take some air…

Legenda

Photo: Carolina Gracindo

To talk about scars and open wounds, still burning and thirsty for healing, it is necessary to look deeper. Pierce the blue immensity, remember the carelessness, scrapping, neglect, fires of our memories and death policies. Take care of the ashes, see the blood, sweat and burns on the skin. Recognize the deficit of representation of the bodies of women, blacks and indigenous people in decision-making chairs. We need healers who are able to appreciate without exploring. We need swimming bodies, vissungos from the song of whales to articulate intersections, to account for crossed, ancestral and invisible currents. To think about new treasure-archives repertoires based on historical silences and gaps. The reflection of many faces is still blurred in museums.

New dips can rotate the usual sense of vectors. Going from college to kindergarten, up to barefoot kids who have never seen the sea. Give breath to permissive creativities, community knowledge, particular experiences and inherent powers. Living unexpected interactions, in which the bathhouse can be lesbian and emotions are welcome, because tears are “healing that comes with salt”.

Such contemporaneity diluted linearities in polycentric fishing nets. We need to look for “la revelación de fuerzas que nos ligan / Se mezclan semillas de diversidad / Y la cosecha aclara todo lo que importa / Aclarate con la oscuridad”. Making the museum a more plural place: a reflection and home of our people.

The answers are not closed. Coexistence generates arrangements. On the high seas the constellation is of another order. And to understand the height of the waves that are to come, it is necessary to cross the Surf line:

Make a poem that messes up your own hair
and break in our heads
like a good
surf

of only foam sand left
and salt between your worn away
teeth

And don’t say I didn’t warn you:
poetry is deep sea, beach
of tumble” . (CÓRTES, 2020)

Here, I take a rest. On a coast of fine sand, washed up by the waves, with no ready-made paths or demarcated limits…

and where there is no full stop

Bibliography

ALVES, Miriam. O Corpo Pelado. In: Juntar Pedaços. Rio de Janeiro: Malê, 2021.

ADICHIE, Chimamanda Ngozi. The danger of a single story. TEDGlobal. TED: Ideas worth spreading. 2009. Available: .Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

CÔRTES, Joana. Linha de Arrebentação. In: Linha de arrebentação. São Paulo. Ed. Urutau. 2020.

GONZALEZ, Lélia. A categoria político-cultural de amefricanidade. Tempo Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro, v. 92, n. 93, p. 69-82, (jan./jun.), 1988b, p. 69-82. Available: https://institutoodara.org.br/wp-content/https://estudosdecoloniais.mac.usp.br/uploads/2019/09/a-categoria-polc3adtico-cultural-de-amefricanidade-lelia-gonzales1.pdf.Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

GELEDÉS. Ubuntu. A Filosofia Africana Que Nutre O Conceito De Humanidade Em Sua Essência. Portal Geledés, 2016. Available: https://www.geledes.org.br/ubuntu-filosofia-africana-conceito-de-humanidade-em-sua-essencia/. Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

HALL, S. A relevância de Gramsci para o estudo de raça e etnicidade. In: HALL, S. Da diáspora: identidades e mediações culturais. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2003. p. 294-334.

INSTITUTO TOMIE OHTAKE. Maxwell Alexandre – pardo é papel. São Paulo: Instituto Tomie Ohtake, 2021. Available: https://www.institutotomieohtake.org.br/exposicoes/interna/pardo-e-papel. Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

LIMA, Diane. Valongo Festival International da Imagem. O melhor da viagem é a demora. Revista C& América Latina, 2019. Available: https://amlatina.contemporaryand.com/pt/editorial/the-best-part-of-the-trip-is-the-journey-valongo/. Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

LYOTARD, Jean-François. A Condição Pós-Moderna. 20a ed. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 2021.

MIRANDA, Eduardo . Polícia do Rio de Janeiro troca delegado do caso Marielle Franco e Anderson pela quarta vez. Rio de Janeiro: Brasil de Fato, 2021. Available: https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2021/07/07/policia-do-rio-de-janeiro-troca-delegado-do-caso-marielle-franco-e-anderson-pela-quarta-vez. Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

MOMA. From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried | Carrie Mae Weems | UNIQLO ArtSpeaks. New York: MoMA’s ArtSpeaks program, 2021.

NEUFELD, Paulo M. A tradicional ética africana do ubuntu e a moderna liderança empresarial: à guisa de uma introdução para a gestão laboratorial. Revista Brasileira Análise Clínica, Rio de Janeiro, v. 48, n. 3, p. 178-181, 2016. Available: http://www.rbac.org.br/wp-content/https://estudosdecoloniais.mac.usp.br/uploads/2016/11/RBAC-48-3-2016-completa-corrigida-22.11.16-final.pdf. Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

OLIVEIRA, Flavia. As voltas que o mundo dá. Portal Geledés. 2015. Available: https://www.geledes.org.br/as-voltas-que-o-mundo-da/. Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

RANGEL, Luiz. Conversa com Wallace Ferreira e Davi Pontes, Serpentes à espreita. Revista C& América Latina. 2021. Available: https://amlatina.contemporaryand.com/pt/editorial/serpentes-a-espreita-wallace-ferreira-davi-pontes/. Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

SANTOS, Juliana. MaPA | Juliana dos Santos | “Entre o azul e o que não me deixo/deixam esquecer”. São Paulo: Paço das Artes. 2020. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z5mFwGcK-E. Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

TOMAZ, Kleber. Após invasão em 2008, pichadores são convidados a voltar à Bienal. G1. 2010. Available: http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/noticia/2010/09/apos-invasao-em-2008-pichadores-sao-convidados-voltar-bienal.html. Accessed: oct. 24, 2021.

Legenda

Photo: Carolina Gracindo

1Davi Pontes and Wallace Ferreira are artists who perform choreographic practices, oriented to the development of self-defense strategies. The works they carry out, called Repertory, make up a trilogy in which bodies move in one and only time, which mixes past, present and future.
2The revolutionary association of nudity with Eshu is evident in the moral and political issues facing bodies in our society. The excerpt pays homage to the Brazilian writer, activist and poet Miriam Alves, referring to the short story O Corpo Pelado , which was the basis of study during the MAC-USP webinar. In the short story, the author describes herself as a naked and calm woman, smiling in front of the mirror and thinking about the phrase: “all nudity is eshuziac”. (ALVES, 2021, p. 17).
3Amefricano is a term coined by Lélia Gonzales to guide the construction of an ethnic identity to the descendants of Africans born in South, Central, North and Insular America, through a category that “allows us to overcome the limitations of territorial, linguistic and ideological character” and incorporate “a historical process of intense cultural dynamics (adaptation, resistance, reinterpretation and creation of new forms) that is Afrocentric” (GONZALEZ, 1988, p. 76-77).
4Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu: “a person only becomes a person from their relationship with other people”. It is a Xhosa and Zulu proverb that follows the ubuntu moral and humanist philosophy. “Ubuntu is born from the ancestral idea [1,500 BC] that community strength comes from community support and that dignity and identity are achieved through mutualism, empathy, generosity, community commitment and collaborative work for the benefit of oneself and others. In this sense, ubuntu differs from the western philosophy derived from the Enlightenment rationalism that places the individual at the center of the conception of human being” (NEUFELD, 2016).
5Reverence to Ana Leopoldina dos Santos (Ouricuri, February 18, 1923 - Petrolina, October 1, 2008 (85 years old), ceramic artist from Pernambuco.
6Nanã, Anamburucu ou Nanan Buruku (in Yoruba), the oldest of the orishas, lady of wisdom, of the swamps and of the clay used as raw material by human beings.
7“From here I saw what happened and I cry” is an installation work by artist Carrie Mae Weems that deals with American racial injustice. To learn more, watch the online video of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pcf6z5qHTU.
8Anansi, Ananse, Anancy. is an African legend that tells about the time when there were no stories on Earth, as they all belonged to Nyame, the Sky God, and how Kwaku Ananse (the spider-being) uses his creativity, wisdom and cunning to bring stories to be told on Earth. In parallel, Ananse Ntontan is an infographic of the Akan people of West Africa, which carries the symbology of wisdom, cleverness, creativity and the complexity of life.
9The saying is taken from the myth of Eshu, the “messenger, spokesperson, interpreter”, teaches the Brazilian Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora, by Nei Lopes. Noguera completes: “It is the Orisha that opens the way for the event. In mythology, when he throws the stone over his shoulder and kills the bird the day before, Eshu reinvents the past. He teaches that things can be reopened at any time”. (apud OLIVEIRA, 2015).
10Among the studies that approach the crisis of universal narratives, we can mention the reflections on the concept of hegemony made by the Jamaican Stuart Hall in the text Gramsci's relevance to the study of race and ethnicity, as well as the enunciation of the end of metanarratives, made by Lyotard in the work The Postmodern Condition. But this work highlights the speech of Chimamanda Ngozi, during the speech The danger of a single story`, made at the event Tecnology, Entertainment and Design (TED), in 2009.
11The phrase I can't breathe became the slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement after the repercussion of the case of Eric Garner and George Floyd , two African-American men killed by suffocation because of the abuse of authority and violence by white police officers, in 2014 and 2020, respectively.
12Excerpt from the song Liquida, by the Brazilian multimedia artist and rapper born in Guarulhos, known as Novíssimo Edgar.
13Three of the taggers who painted the empty space, without authorization, at the 2008 Bienal, were invited to exhibit at the 29th Bienal with a documentary work called Pixação SP, in 2010.
14A Presença Negra (2000) was a manifesto for the occupation of cultural spaces by black people, conceived by the artists Moisés Patrício and Peter de Brito.
15The investigation into the execution of councilor Marielle Franco, murdered on March 14, 2018 in the North Zone of Rio, has been going on since 2018 and has already had four changes of police inspectors in the case. (MIRANDA, 2021).
16Pardo é Papel (Brown is paper) is the name of Maxwell Alexandre's first solo show in São Paulo, held at Instituto Tomie Ohtake. The exhibition “refers to May 2017, when the artist painted some self-portraits on sheets of brown paper lost in the studio. In this process, in addition to the powerful aesthetic seduction, he realized the political and conceptual act he is articulating when painting black bodies on brown paper, since the brown 'color' was used for a long time to veil blackness” (INSTITUTO TOMIE OHTAKE, 2021).
17Also called graúna (from the Tupi guira-una = black bird), chico-preto (Maranhão and Piauí), arranca milho, chopim, chupim (São Paulo), chupão (Mato Grosso), assum-preto and cupido (Ceará), melro and craúna (Paraíba).
18The artist Juliana dos Santos created the work Between the Blue and what I/they don’t let me forget after researching color as a life experience and reflections on nature and healing.
19Many cases of policy negligence lead to permanent losses of the collections of institutions, keepers of the memory of our people. A case remembered by curator Claudinei Roberto, in one of the MAC USP Webinar meetings, was the fire that destroyed the National Museum, in the North Zone of Rio, in 2018.
20On different occasions, the research, speeches and posture of the artist and curator Claudinei Roberto da Silva highlight the need to reorganize scientific thinking, in order to reach fields of study on the narrative layers that have been made invisible in the history of humanity. Dedicating greater attention to the construction of memories that cross different sources, often external to institutional means. On the occasion of the MAC USP PROCESSOS CURATORIAIS Webinar (2021), Claudinei defended the recomposition of knowledge sources with the work History and Memory (1996), by historian Jacques Legoff.
21The artist from Minas Gerais Malú Avelar “proposes the project of political imagination Lesbian Bathhouse. The installation starts from the creation of an imaginary conceptual and political space, organizing itself from collective and propositional negotiations to think, through contemporary art, lesbians, self-care, being also a meeting and celebration point for dissident bodies in their different forms of expression” (LIMA, 2019).
22In one of the MAC USP Webinar CURATORIAL PROCESSES meetings (2021), artist and curator Renata Felinto highlighted, with this sentence, the importance of welcoming emotions – as a legitimate response to poetic crossings – in academic spaces. The issue of “healing” was present both in the dialogues about the creative processes of contemporary artists and in the emancipatory paths of decolonial studies in Visual Arts.
23“We must seek the revelation of the forces that unite us / Seeds of diversity are mixed / And the harvest clarifies all that matters / Enlighten yourself with the dark”. Song ‘Aclarate’, by Tiganá Santana (2019) (GRACINDO, 2021, our translation).
24The poem Linha de arrebentação (Surf line) was transcribed from the homonymous book, created by the black dyke poet from the brackish waters of Aracaju, Joana Côrtes.