Photo: Coniiin

Every night, Grada Kilomba plays the piano with her youngest daughter. While Grada plays the rhythm section, her daughter improvises over it. The sound of this intimate and affectionate moment was placed on... videoinstallation Opera to a Black Venus (2024), currently showing at Inhotim

The artist has been working on the project since April 2024. The boat Currently on display at the Galpão Gallery of the Minas Gerais institution. It features 134 blocks of burnt wood in an area of ​​over 220 square meters. The arrangement of the blocks alludes to the ships that transported enslaved people during centuries of transatlantic trafficking. Between the blocks, visitors walk along verses of the poem of the same name as the work, engraved in gold oil paint. 

Opera to a Black Venus This is the third and final activation event for the exhibition, which had the primeiro I'm 2024 second In 2025. With the new addition, visitors, as they walk through the boat, will finish their journey greeted by a video. In it, a group of artists, including dancers, percussionists, and singers – among sopranos, altos, and tenors – are in a setting of arid land, with rocks in the background, as if the ocean had dried up. The group moves, sings, and breathes fluidly and slowly, following the movement of the waters that are no longer there. 

“What would the ocean floor tell us tomorrow if it were emptied of water today?” is the question Grada raises in her work. “I imagine a very futuristic scenario in which the sea disappears, as it has already disappeared here, and we are left only with the rocks and the ground. This ground is an archive of human existence, because the oceans have experienced the most violent policies of humanity,” the artist explains in an interview for [publication name]. arte!brasileirosGrada points to the crossings of slavery, but also to contemporary times, in which bodies need to cross the ocean to escape wars and genocide. 

To address this theme "in the most poetic way possible," in her words, it was important to radically reduce the many days of filming, as well as to use the sound of the improvised piano between mother and daughter: "I think it's very important to bring this element in these moments when we are living through and experiencing horrendous images of children dealing with these grotesque policies." 

The logic of improvisation also marks the structure of the work. Grada associates this procedure with the jazz tradition, in which a group of bodies and instruments respond to each other in real time.

Beauty and horror

“One of the most important tasks of an artist is to work with horrors for which we have no language,” she states. For her, the great challenge for the artist lies in speaking about these issues without dehumanizing them and without repeating the violence. That is why, she explains, poetry and abstraction are precious tools for her. 

Just like horror, beauty is present in Opera to a Black Venus"This aspect of beauty is important for all peripheral movements, because we live in hardship or precariousness, but we create beauty, we create joy, we create happiness," she reflects. 

From the beginning of the collaboration between the artist and Inhotim, one concern was to keep the work alive and in constant dialogue with the community. If in the first act The boat It was activated with a performance featuring artists mostly from the outskirts of Lisbon; in the second, the opening brought together foreign artists with artists from Minas Gerais, from the local community. To achieve this, research was conducted involving terreiros (Afro-Brazilian religious sites), quilombos (settlements of escaped slaves), and the outskirts of the Brumadinho area.

In the third act, since it is a video, it is expected that a much larger audience than those who watched the activations of the first two acts will be exposed to the performance. 

“This is part of my work concept, which has this dimension of responsibility, of justice. How can a work also encompass a community, not just one artist, without being centered and anchored in just one person – that is extremely masculine and extremely dominant, but as a woman, an artist of the diaspora, I have a work methodology that involves not only my body, but many other bodies and many other people,” she concludes.

Inhotim 20 years

Activation of The boat This is part of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Inhotim Institute. Throughout 2026, the special program will connect contemporary art, nature, education, and territory. Check out the calendar of exhibitions that will be inaugurated:

07/02 – Openings with Grada Kilomba (The Boat – Act III) and Paulo Nazareth (Exorcism – Summer)

April 25th – Inaugurations with Dalton Paula, Davi de Jesus do Nascimento and Lais Myrrha

12/09 – Opening of the Inhotim 20 Years exhibition and Inhotim Evening

17/10 – Openings with Cildo Meireles and Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller

18/10 – Inhotim Anniversary Party (free program)


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