State: Bahia

The idea of ​​Afrofuturism refers to a complex and controversial field of dissident intellectual, political and artistic positions. The term is usually associated with the idea of ​​anti-racism, ancestry, future and technocultures. The practices of Afrofuturism are driven by the observation of the historical and ideological invisibility of black people in Western societies, demonstrated in the absence of black representation and protagonism in literature, arts, sciences, history and science fiction narratives. In this context, Afrofuturism signals the existence of black humanity, in a world not determined by racism and oppression. A post-racial world.

The term Afrofuturism was coined by writer Mark Dery in 1994 (Black to the future) and disseminated by African-American thinkers and artists who criticize slavery as a mechanism for erasing black lives. It informs a set of intellectual and artistic practices, oriented towards the construction of realities not marked by racial supremacy.

A peculiar vision of this debate we find in the theorist Achille Mbembe, in his text Afropolitanism (2005). For the Cameroonian author, there is a pre-colonial African modernity, which was devastated in its materiality and memory by colonialist practices. From this perspective, the Afrofuturist vision consists of unveiling modernity in an ancestral past, still present in social spaces that are reminiscent of it, such as the sacred territories of Afro-diasporic religions and quilombola communities.

The exposure Afrofuturist Bahia: Bauer Sá and Gilberto Filho, by promoting dialogue between two black artists with different poetics, seeks to present different approaches to this new aesthetic, committed to black activism. The languages ​​chosen by the artists — photography and sculpture — serve as a strategy for experimenting with concepts such as corporeality and spatiality from an affirmative and Afro-centered perspective.

Bauer Sá (1950) is part of the tradition of black Bahians who made a career as photographers or photojournalists. However, what is peculiar about his production is the inclusion of his photography in a refined circuit of visual arts institutions and collections, a circuit that was, by the way, mostly white in Brazil. In Bahia, Bauer Sá and Mário Cravo Neto are contemporaries and are part of this mainstream which contributed to elevating photography to the status of a work of art, although racism tried to build distinct trajectories and privileges for both.

A first issue must be highlighted when thinking about Bauer's solitary creative process: the way in which the black body is politically crossed by the condition of subject in his elaborate imagetic constructions. Bauer is one of the pioneers, as a black artist, of anti-racist art in Bahia. His work is a blunt critique of the long ethnographic tradition of representing the black body as a body-thing (enslaved body). This way, we can link it to Afrofuturist concerns.

His images are constructed using synthetic and precise methodological elaborations, with the aim of refining his visual discourse. This explains his choice of black and white photography, a technique he learned as an assistant in his father's laboratory. All formal control is at the service of the narrative refinement of the images. Generally, his works articulate two elements — a black model and a precisely selected object — that perform a provocative and political action.

His talent produces visual patterns that are meticulously constructed and elaborated. The modeling of light on the black background generates a soft glow on the surface, revealing a rare play of light and dark on black skin. Such aesthetic achievement represents a technical challenge in understanding the image of black people and their photogenicity. The racist statement that black people “burn the film” is recurrent in common sense. Bauer destroys this infamous idea. Carrying out its sophisticated creation process justifies the option for studio photography, where it is possible to have strict control over the image produced.

The black body in Bauer, in fine irony of the Western racist tradition, is also naked. However, the nudity in his photos does not objectify or hypersexualize the black body. The nudity in his work is cutting, political, revolutionary. It is the prerogative of a black humanity that denounces inequalities and claims the condition and place of subject to those unsubmissive bodies. Bauer Sá does guerrilla photography. His aesthetics can be understood by the “black radical tradition”, where the body-thing gives way to the body-image, promoting the death of ethnological photography, so common in Bahia. This stance gives him a prominent place, even if on the margins, in the history of Bahian art. His work is impactful due to the violent objectivity of the messages they convey. Without being pamphleteer, Bauer Sá's artistic activism deconstructs and constrains old racist representations. His images, of rare insurgent poetics, reveal a work that establishes a critique of the present, as it suggests fables of a future where black humanity is possible.

Gilberto Filho (1953) began his artistic work as a carpenter's apprentice in his father's workshop, in the historic city of Cachoeira, in the Recôncavo region of Bahia. This city was once the seat of the first rural aristocracy in America, a condition that made it a strategic place for the confluence of African populations originating from slavery. The large concentration of people of African descent transformed the city into an important reference for Afro-Brazilian culture. This justifies the presence of numerous black artists who produce wooden sculptures and who enjoy prestige for the quality of their works, usually representing saints, Candomblé deities and other popular themes.

In the artistic panorama of Cachoeira, Gilberto Filho's work stands out for being completely different from the themes of his fellow countrymen. His production conveys an erasure in the conception of temporality. He evades Western notions of past and present, putting the linear idea of ​​time in suspension through a disruptive imagination that builds cities that are futuristic daydreams. Gilberto reframes the future in an ancestral modernity, conceived as a system of knowledge and beliefs from the past that guide the understanding of the world.

In the colonial landscape of the city of Cachoeira, the artist promotes a poetic estrangement by building Afrofuturist megalopolises in pau d'arco, rosewood, sucupira, angelim, laurel and other hardwoods. The artist also uses reclaimed wood to create the future on the ruins of the past. A past seemingly overcome in grand architectural constructions, reminiscent of cities in science fiction stories.

In its manufacture, we recognize several traditional techniques for working with wood, such as marquetry, carvings and cutouts. With the help of chisels, lathes, saws and hammers, he gives life to sets of skyscrapers, laboriously crafted into their towers, pediments, domes, balconies, frames, pilotis and countless floors. His constructions, of refined geometric rigor, should not be confused with models, because, as the artist informs us, his works “are not copies of buildings”.

Its scale reaches 2,5m in height, establishing itself spatially in an installation way, and transporting us to imaginary and distant places, diluting buildings and facades in an almost abstraction. Gilberto invents worlds, imposing himself in the space where the sculptural arrangements are assembled. It is curious to contemplate the contemporary nature of his futuristic sculptures in the old colonial halls of the prosaic city of Cachoeira.

At first glance, the use of wood to build future worlds seems contradictory, as these have always been associated with brand new synthetic materials and cutting-edge technologies. However, if we look at the issue from the perspective of African ancestral modernity, perhaps Gilberto Filho's artistic procedure will become more understandable. According to this conception, the elements of nature are loaded with energies that act on the order of the world, way and destinations. Therefore, we understand that a cosmic memory lives in each log, pointing out paths and guiding ecologically harmonious futures. Therefore, to build a future that overcomes the inequalities of the present, there is nothing better than being guided by this ancestral wisdom. Only then will an absolutely new world be possible.

The cities in Gilberto, on the other hand, gesture beyond the social equity utopias of modernism. Its constructions seem uninhabited, waiting for the ideals of justice and equality that are to come and that will promote an effective horizontality of social stratifications. The artist invites us to fly over an anti-racist society, where his sculptures serve as inspiration for Afrofuturist narratives. A city that fits black humanity, a Brazilian Wakanda.

Thinking about the production of Bauer Sá and Gilberto Filho is an exercise in understanding different anti-racist confrontations, at a time when we are joining forces to rewrite the history of Brazilian art in a diverse and inclusive way, highlighting the protagonism of black and indigenous people. Breaking with stereotypes imposed by Western society, black art has been gaining relevant space and the black artist has broken the centuries-old ideological invisibility, asserting himself as the author of an artistic poetics necessary to think about culture in Brazil.

Service
Exhibition | Afrofuturist Bahia: Bauer Sá and Gilberto Filho
From June 04th to September 28th
Monday to Thursday 10am to 19pm, Friday 10am to 18pm, Saturday 11am to 15pm

A Galatea Salvador is pleased to announce its second exhibition, titled Afrofuturist Bahia: Bauer Sá and Gilberto Filho. The exhibition is structured into two distinct sections: in the first, photographs by Bauer Sá (1950, Salvador, BA), produced between the 1990s and 2000s, explore the power of Afro-Brazilian ancestry through figurations of the black body represented as the protagonist of scene; in the second, wooden sculptures that portray utopian and modern cities imagined by Gilberto Filho (1953, Cachoeira, BA) come together for the first time in such a broad way in an exhibition, with works produced from 1992 to the present moment.

This dialogue between the works of Bahian artists creates a rich visual narrative, connecting ancestry and fables around possible futures. The exhibition also features a critical text by the artist and curator Ayrson Heráclito, recognized for addressing symbols and traditions linked to Afro-Brazilian culture in his work, and Beto Heráclito, writer and historian.

Service
Exhibition | Afrofuturist Bahia
From July 04th to September 28th
Monday to Thursday 10am to 19pm, Friday 10am to 18pm, Saturday 11am to 15pm

A Hugo France Gallery, in partnership with Raquel Arnaud Gallery, presents the exhibition "INSIDE OUTSIDE", a retrospective of the works of Frida Baranek. Cured by Marc Pottier, the exhibition traces the artist's trajectory from her first exhibition at Petite Galerie in Rio de Janeiro to her influences and residencies in Europe and the United States.

“IN/OUT” explores the relationship between matter and form, using materials such as galvanized steel mesh, acrylic, glass and various metals. Inspired by the “American Anti-Form” movement of the 1960s and artists such as Eva Hesse and Robert Morris, Baranek creates sculptures that often remain on the floor, evoking continuity and transformation.

The exhibition reflects the duality experienced by Baranek in his nomadic career between Brazil and Portugal, adapting his work to cultural and personal changes. Her works bear witness to the interaction between the artist’s intimate “Inside” and the environment’s dynamic “Outside”, revealing a dialogue with memory, experience and change.

Visitors are invited to contemplate the sculptures installed in the large environment of Galeria Hugo França, which genuinely connects with the surrounding nature, and the emotional space shared by Baranek through his creations. Works such as “Fronteira”, “Ma Mémoire”, “Balance” among others, make up the exhibition.

Frida Baranek, Brazilian and international contemporary artist, continues to challenge the boundaries of contemporary sculpture in “INTER/OUT”

Service
Exhibition | INSIDE OUTSIDE
From July 06th to September 15th
Monday to Friday, from 10am to 17pm. Saturday, Sunday and holidays by appointment only

Em “Three Stones Inside This Village”, visual artist Luisa Magaly exposes the results of his three-year research at Terreiro de Umbanda Caboclo Sultão das Matas. On display until September 20th, at João Gilberto de Juazeiro Culture Center (BA), the exhibition welcomes visitors from Monday to Saturday with free entry.

In the series of new works, the artist uses various techniques, such as photography and ceramics, to reflect on the presence of sacred stones in Umbanda rituals. “Umbanda has several references, they reflect on my technical choices. For many people, the stone is something inanimate and within African and indigenous religions, it appears as a living being, which carries strength and axé”, says Magaly.

The curatorship is signed by Eriel Araújo and Mãe Isabel de Oxum. “This exhibition brings an overview of the stones that she had been investigating, both from a historical, theoretical and procedural point of view”, explains Araújo.

This project was included in the Paulo Gustavo Bahia Notices and has financial support from the Government of the State of Bahia through the Secretariat of Culture via the Paulo Gustavo Law, directed by the Ministry of Culture, Federal Government. Paulo Gustavo Bahia (PGBA) was created to carry out emergency actions to support the cultural sector, aiming to comply with Complementary Law No. 195, of July 8, 2022.

There is also support from the Federal University of Bahia, through PROEXT and the Postgraduate Program in Visual Arts at the School of Fine Arts, the Federal University of Sergipe, through the Department of Visual Arts and Design, and the João Gilberto Culture Center

Service
Exhibition | Three Stones Inside This Village
From August 02th to September 20th
Monday to Saturday, 9am to 17pm