Roots nº1: Tribute to Aguinaldo Camargo, 1987. Museum of Black Art - IPEAFRO. Inhotim Disclosure.
Roots nº1: Tribute to Aguinaldo Camargo, 1987. Museum of Black Art - IPEAFRO. Inhotim Disclosure.

On May 28, Inhotim opens new works and temporary exhibitions featuring Isaac Julien, an important name in the fields of installation and cinema, invited to exhibit one of his most emblematic works at Galeria Praça. Acervo em Movimento, a program created to share with the public the works recently integrated into the collection, opens with works by Brazilian artists Arjan Martins and Laura Belém, both installed in external areas of the Institute.

Jaime Lauriano is also part of the list of artists participating in the program, and opens the Inhotim Biblioteca project. The artist's installation is directly related to the Second Act of the Abdias Nascimento project and the Museum of Black Art (MAN), by proposing the curatorship of a new bibliography that includes black authors to integrate the collection of the Inhotim library. Finally, installed at Galeria Mata, the second act of the project, jointly curated by Inhotim and IPEAFRO, addresses the Teatro Experimental do Negro, a movement led by Abdias Nascimento, which is at the origins of the Museu de Arte Negra.

The openings are part of the Specific Territory, a research axis that guides the Institute's programming in the biennium of 2021 and 2022, designed to debate and reflect on the role of art in the territories at local and global levels, as well as the relationship of institutions with their surroundings. .

Check out the details of each opening below:

Looking for Langston by Issac Julien

Em Looking for Langston A work that unites poetry and image, Isaac Julien starts from a lyrical exploration of the private world of the African-American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright and columnist Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967) and his fellow black artists and writers who formed the Harlem Renaissance – cultural movement based on African-American cultural expressions that took place throughout the 1920s.

“In 1954, Langston Hughes exchanged correspondence with Abdias Nascimento, authorizing the Teatro Experimental do Negro to stage his plays. In this sense, both Hughes, Abdias and Isaac Julien, each in their own time, sought representation and recognition of black artistic and intellectual production”, says Julieta González, artistic director of Inhotim.

Moving collection: Arjan Martins and Laura Belém

Latent in the works of Arjan Martins are concepts about migrations and other displacements of bodies and presences between spaces of struggle and power, as well as diasporas and colonial movements that took place in Afro-Atlantic territories.

in the installation of Chips (2021), Arjan exposes devices intended to indicate the direction of the winds, which merge with maritime flags and their international codes to transmit messages between vessels and ports.

“In the fusion of these two elements, windsocks and nautical flags, Arjan deals with the transit of bodies across the oceans, the trafficking of enslaved people and the diasporas caused by colonial movements”, explains Douglas de Freitas, Curator of Inhotim.

On the lake between Galerias Mata and True Rouge, the visitor will come across two rowing boats equipped with spotlights that light up, facing each other, on the water. The lights on one of the boats come on, while those on the other remain off. After 20 seconds, they reverse. The lights on both boats are then turned on simultaneously and, at the end, they all turn off until the cycle automatically restarts. Its about Lovers (2004), work by Minas Gerais artist Laura Belém, exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennale, which then enters into a dialogue with the work of Martins.

Second Act of the Abdias do Nascimento Black Art Museum

Emanoel Araújo, Woman with fruit on her head, 1966. Museum of Black Art - IPEAFRO. Inhotim Disclosure.
Emanoel Araújo, Woman with fruit on her head, 1966. Museum of Black Art – IPEAFRO. Inhotim Disclosure.

The Museum of Black Art is its own museum within the Inhotim space that brings the initiative dreamed up by Abdias Nascimento (1914-2011) in the early 1950s. The project is based on the multidisciplinary legacy of Abdias, poet, writer, playwright, curator , plastic artist, university professor and parliamentarian with a long trajectory in activism and in the fight against racism. Presented in four temporary exhibitions, renewed every five months -, the realization of the project at Inhotim is built based on aspects of four Orixás, constant presences in the artist's paintings, and in the history and developments of the Museum. Under the sign of Oxóssi, guardian of the forests and Orixá of the throne of knowledge, the Second Act of the project, entitled Dramas for Blacks and Prologue for Whites, covers a period marked by theater in the artistic and political formation of Abdias Nascimento, and in the initial conception of the collection of the Museum of Black Art, from 1941 to 1968 – the year in which Abdias began his exile in the United States and Nigeria.

Shown at Galeria Mata, the show addresses the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN) – an initiative from which the Museum of Black Art was born, created by Abdias Nascimento in 1944 -, whose main purpose was to gain space for black people in the performing arts. The exhibition brings to the public documents on the trajectory of the Teatro Experimental do Negro, paintings by Abdias and works by artists such as Anna Bella Geiger, Heitor dos Prazeres, Iara Rosa, José Heitor da Silva, Sebastião Januário, Octávio Araújo and Yêdamaria, who are part of the collection of the IPEAFRO Black Art Museum. The activities of the Teatro Experimental do Negro lasted until 1968 and it was within one of them, the 1st Congress of the Brazilian Negro, held in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1950, that the Black Art Museum project emerged.


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