Exhibition "Acará: insurgent delicacy"

The gallery Verve opens the exhibition to the public “Acará: insurgent delicacy”, with curatorial text by the researcher Ana Paula Rocha. Acará – from the Kikongo: kala, burning coal, ember – gives its name to the ritual in which a piece of cotton, soaked in palm oil, is lit on fire so that it can be swallowed by people in a trance. The word also designates dishes made with black-eyed peas in religious temples, including acarajé (“eating a ball of fire”), linked to the food and affection traditions passed down by black mothers.

At the same time, Acará, from Tupi-Guarani, names several species of fish – acará-bandeira, acará do Congo, acará-cascudo – and sometimes receives, in the popular dialect, the meaning of “fish that bites”. By representing the main rituals of several indigenous peoples, the fish is related to aspects of vigor and care, specific to the act of fishing, cooking and preparation. “ACARÁ: delicadeza insurgente” investigates this coexistence between strength and sensitivity. With the aim of subverting stereotypes associated with non-white groups sometimes considered violent, sometimes passive, in national historiography and its institutional archives, the exhibition highlights the way in which artists, individually or collectively, present insurgent political proposals, aligned with strong aesthetic rigor and delicacy.

Organized by Verve, the exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the galleries Gomide & Co., Simões de Assis, Mendes Wood DM, Vermelho, Almeida and Dale, Millan and Portas Vilaseca Galeria, and brings together the work of artists Ana Beatriz Almeida, Ayrson Heraclito, Eustáquio Neves, Emanoel Araujo, Jaider Esbell, Lita Cerqueira, Maria Auxiliadora, Maria Lira Marques, Moisés Patrício, Nádia Taquary, Paulo Nazareth, Sidney Amaral and Shai Andrade.

The exhibition opens in dialogue with the solo show 'Posesión' by Cuban artist Carlos Martiel, which opens on the same day, highlighting the dual engagement of the artists involved, who create political proposals that are as insurgent as they are charged with strong rigor and aesthetic delicacy. “The exhibition is an invitation to reflect and critically raise awareness of the sociocultural impacts of class-race violence, without ever giving up a perspective that proposes freedom and an incendiary wonder of the world,” as Ana Paula Rocha defines it in her critical essay for the exhibition.

Service
Exhibition | Acará: insurgent delicacy
From August 24th to October 24th
Tuesday to Friday, 11am to 18pm, Saturday, 12pm to 17pm