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Artists from Brazil will expose their art to a broader community of artists at the Tamarind Institute, where their work is more accepted than at home.
The Tamarind Institute typically hosts contemporary artists from the U.S., but this summer, they host three Afro-Brazilian artists who will be paired with three African-American artists. This is part of the institute’s ongoing effort to spread knowledge of lithography — printmaking using stone — so artists all over the world understand and can use the medium.
Artist Rosana Paulino, who is from São Paulo, said although rampant racism in Brazil has been somewhat tempered by government efforts such as racial quotas in universities, the problem remains. She said society is slowly but surely getting used to black people who are taking jobs from which they were previously excluded.
“When you are the cleaner, people will look at you like the cleaner,” she said. “Cleaners don’t mean a challenge to an established authority, but when you occupy a place such as a judge, you are occupying a place that, for a lot of people, ‘is not for a black person.’”
Paulino said she has been interested in the subject of racism since she was a child. She said racism dominates Brazil even though the majority of the population is black, and she questions this through her art.
“When I was a child, I was worried about not seeing black people in TV, newspapers, etc.,” she said. “When black people appeared, they were ever the cleaner, the prostitute, the robber; I mean, the idea surrounding blacks was ever negative, the worst possible.”
Sidnei Amaral, another artist visiting from São Paulo, said the art community in Brazil is small, and, as a result, it is difficult to be successful as an artist, no matter what someone’s race. By working with such a well-known and established institute as Tamarind, Amaral said he hopes to enter the broader art community.
“I have a drawing called ‘The Stranger’ in which I stand up paddling in a mattress toward a building of the São Paulo Biennial with the work ‘La Fontaine’ from Duchamp, because I never felt like I was part of this artistic community,” he said. “I am a stranger coming in through artistic environment.”
Marjorie Devon, director of the Tamarind Institute, said she visited Brazil to search for native artists. She said she met a man who lived in a favela, or slum, and he told her he was fortunate because his poet neighbors sent him to typing school when he was young. This exposed him to books and eventually allowed him to receive his master’s degree in public health. His thesis was on violence in the favela, and upon completion, his adviser suggested he find the beauty in the slum.
“So he started looking for the self-taught artists in the favela and began to collect their work,” she said. “So now, he has what he calls his rooftop gallery. He’s exposing kids to art in a way they wouldn’t have been by allowing them into his gallery.”
Paulino said the art community in Brazil is small, and not only in its lack of state or private financial support and few gallery spaces. She said black art, female art and gay art are not readily accepted in the community. To combat this, she said she hopes to learn more about using art as a civil instrument from the African-American artists she meets at Tamarind.
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“I believe this difficulty is linked with the lack of respect to civil rights,” she said. “As we advance in this area, the art linked with these groups will occupy the place that it deserves. We are just starting to walk in this field.”
“Afro: Black Identity in America and Brazil”
June 1 through August 31
Tamarind Institute gallery
2500 Central Ave. S.E.
Gallery hours
Monday through Friday
9 a.m.–5 p.m.
