Grada Kilomba is the happiest artist in the world. At least that's how she felt right after her first performance of The Boat – Act II, on the afternoon of February 7th, at Inhotim. The presentation, exclusive to museum staff and journalists, preceded the two performances open to the public over the weekend, February 8 and 9.
The Portuguese artist with origins in São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola, opened, in April 2024, The boat, a work that combines a poem, a large-scale installation and a performance. At the center of the work, 134 blocks of burned wood stretch for 32 meters, composing the structure that refers to the holds of the ships that transported millions of enslaved people during centuries of transatlantic trafficking. “For hundreds of years, slavery and colonialism were at the center of our global history and one of the longest and most horrible histories of humanity, but it is not represented and is not present anywhere,” says Grada.
Between the blocks, visitors walk through the verses of The boat, engraved in gold oil paint. The poem has been translated into six languages: Yoruba, Cape Verdean Creole, Kimbundu, Portuguese, English and Syrian Arabic.
Violence and repetition are central themes in the artist’s work. The boat she evokes does not only belong to the past, it also refers to the present, in which forced migrations are recurrent. “I always work with temporality. There is no past, present and future. Time coincides. So it is this exercise of understanding that, if we do not understand and tell history properly, its barbarity repeats itself.”
Created in 2021, the work was in Portugal and England before being recreated for Brazil. Instead of transporting the blocks, the team chose to produce them locally. Júlia Rebouças, artistic director of Inhotim, highlights that this process strengthened the team's bond with the work. The museum has workshops dedicated to developing projects with the artists, which guarantees autonomy in the maintenance of the installation. If a piece needs to be replaced, there is full control over its recreation.
The sculpture interacts with three performance acts, presented throughout the exhibition period. The first, in April 2024, coincided with the inauguration in Brazil and featured gospel and opera singers, classical dancers and percussionists, most of them Portuguese.
For Act II, a new group was formed: 19 artists, 12 of whom are Brazilians living in Minas Gerais. “My art pieces are, above all, living objects. So, I’m not just interested in bringing a huge 32-meter sculpture, but in creating a dialogue with the territory.” Although the new formation brings the performance closer to Brazil, whether through the artists’ accents or the rhythm of the trio of percussionists, Grada is not interested in “these nationalisms.” For her, the performance brings a completely different vocabulary, a diasporic vocabulary that goes beyond this artificial construction of a nation.
Grada had four days of rehearsals with the collective that she had never seen or heard live. “After those four days, the great exercise is really to build this humanity and build a mass, an organism. So I would say that I see more than Brazil, Portugal, Angola, etc., I see how bodies flow, how art allows bodies to abandon many of these constructions that are often extremely violent.”
Integrating the local community into the work involves historical responsibility, distribution of opportunities and equity. Grada’s happiness comes from these exchanges. “It is very significant, because then the ensemble extends to quilombos, communities, terreiros, and passes through a series of different groups that inhabit this museum. This is extraordinary. I think I am the happiest artist in the world.”
For her, the performance needs to be seen and felt several times. Despite considering it a simple and minimalist work, it deals with painful and complex themes. “They [the artists] are performing this dignified burial that has never been done, this dignified mourning, this understanding of collective trauma that never had a place and a space to be mourned.”
The impact of The boat overflows the exhibition space. People write, send letters and gifts to Grada. That afternoon, she had received avocados.
