Llaunched discreetly in the first half of this year (although printed in 2023), the book Black people in the pool. Contemporary art, curation and education (Ed. Fósforo) arrived swimmingly to conquer the podium of the best publications published in 2024 on art and culture in the Brazilian contemporary scene. Organized by the young intellectual – with an already significant presence in the field of curating and curatorial studies – Diane Lima, the book features texts, testimonials and interviews produced by a group made up of Afro-descendant, Afro-indigenous and indigenous intellectuals and artists.
In all the material gathered there, aspects are presented that, in different ways, bring possibilities for understanding and reflecting on the transformations that have occurred in the field of contemporary art in Brazil in recent years, following the emergence of new generations of artists, curators non-whites and educators, representatives of population groups that had previously had rare representation in the privileged environments of art museums, the very exclusive galleries in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and the famous private collections in these locations.
One of the positive points of Blacks in the pool is to have been composed of texts linked to different methodological currents normally used for reflections on the aforementioned phenomenon, which demonstrates a healthy plurality in dealing with the issues. Despite the quality of the texts published there – all worthy of specific comments – I will deal here with just two of these essays, not only because of the limited space of this review, but above all because of the impact that both had on me while reading the book. I refer to Blacks in the pool: contemporary art, curation and education, by Diane Lima and Violently peaceful: art, decoloniality and institutional insertion, written by Amanda Carneiro, curator.
I believe that by commenting on them, outlining their main points and the quality of many of their observations and analyses, I will also be drawing attention to the general quality of the publication.
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Diane Lima's text, which also acts as an introduction to the book, is not only interesting for its well-founded reflections on the changes that have occurred in the Brazilian artistic-cultural scene in recent decades, in terms of the absorption, within the art circuit, of agents non-white[1]. In addition to the relevance of Diane's considerations on this topic, her essay is also interesting for the aesthetic dimension of her text, which managed to combine such significant content with a sophisticated form of writing. It is interesting how the author weaves her text based on the interpretation of two photographs that, by impacting the author through the image forcefulness of both, function as threads with which Diane will create her writing. The first is a photograph of the Afro-indigenous artist Paulo Nazareth, untitled, from 2014, belonging to a series of works called Africa notebooks (started in 2013 and still in process); the second, a photo produced by the Afro-descendant intellectual and photographer Jônatas Conceição, For an education that interests black people, produced in the 1980s, during a protest that took place on National Black Consciousness Day, in Salvador.
Diane will use the untitled photo by Paulo Nazareth – in which the artist poses with a child on his lap and holding a handwritten poster, which reads Blacks in the pool, not only as a title for the book she organized, but also as a metaphor for her questions about what would be the current conditions of non-white artists, curators and educators who, especially from the second half of the decade past, began to have a more significant presence in the field of visual arts, after centuries in which they were rarely perceived beyond their condition as objects of aesthetic and/or ethnological interest. In one of the most astute moments of the essay, Lima explains how the metaphorical use of Nazareth's work gave him the conditions to think about the situation recently achieved by these young intellectuals and artists. So she writes:
Once again the irony and double meaning awaken our doubt, interest and curiosity to enter the pool. Moment in which we open ourselves to the possibility of imagining what the word “swimming pool”, used as a figure of speech, invites us to: the photo-pool, the museum-pool, the gallery-pool, the institution-pool, the swimming pool -job market, the pool-party, the pool-book, the pool-school, the pool-college, the pool-pool and all the infinite possibilities or impossibilities of being and being in the pool. In other words, all contexts, spaces or situations – sometimes possible, previously impossible, unimaginable, in some way desirable, prohibitive or even illegal for bodies like yours and ours – that the swimming pool, as a field of dispute, makes possible[2].
Characterizing this new situation achieved by young non-white generations and artists and intellectuals in Brazil, the author takes a critical position on what this entry into the various “pools”, previously occupied only by white people, could actually mean. and white. It will be based on the possible consequences that this “ultravisibility” can or could bring to the future of this contingent of new non-white intellectuals and artists, that the author will direct her considerations, until reaching the other photo mentioned, by Jônatas Conceição. This is how Diane describes what impacted her in that image: “In the scene, recorded during a protest that took place in the 1980s, in Salvador, two black women, surrounded by many others, hold signs that, amidst the many illegible slogans, say: 'For an education that interests black people'”[3].
For Lima, the image of Conceição serves as a kind of warning to, firstly, remember that the struggle of many, many people, in the past, was crucial for the conquest of certain positions that can be enjoyed today; secondly, it reminds us of the need not to conform and to distrust the apparently good effects that the recent conquest of institutionalized spaces has brought to non-white artists and intellectuals. After all, even with the victory, the spaces apparently conquered – the swimming pools – continue to belong to those to whom they always belonged.
It is from this kind of crossroads that the two photographic images suggested to her that Diane will then draw attention to the need for the critical debate to continue, so that it is possible, effectively, to carry out in concrete terms what the slogan read in Conceição’s photograph: “For an education that interests black people” – greatly expanding the meanings of the word “education”. And it will be, therefore, based on everyone's awareness of being at that crossroads that the author will then clarify the conceptual intricacies that guided the choice of those who were invited to collaborate with the publication.
In this moment of necessary reorganization of tactics and struggles still to be fought so that the hypervisibility achieved by non-whites does not result in the mere submission of these agents to the world already established by the former owners of all the “swimming pools”, is that Diane opts for a plurality of points of view to invite her collaborators. This further increases the interest and importance of The black man in the pool, showing that the organizer acted well in taking the side of diversity.
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Violently peaceful: art, decoloniality and institutional insertion, essay by Amanda Carneiro[4], in addition to the quality of the considerations and arguments it presents, fits well with Diane Lima's purposes in bringing into the book texts that, in plural, give new energy to all the questions that permeate the meanings of the metaphor “black people in the pool ” and the slogan, “For an education that interests black people”.
Em Violently peaceful: …, the author aims to bring to the art museum sector the discussion about the decolonization of this type of institution, traditionally more linked to museums of ethnographic extraction. Still introducing her theme, Amanda helps to define even more explicitly that crossroads perceived by Diane Lima, in the previous text. She states:
There are those who associate decolonization with inclusion and diversity, that is, with the entry of historically subordinate groups into institutional hierarchies. Some indicate that it is necessary to be radically anti-colonial and anti-racist and are in favor of a radical break with the structural foundations of the art world, often based on the colonial extraction of resources and knowledge. There are those who also denounce the co-optation of the term[5].
After this synthetic characterization of the general complexity of the debate, the author brings the issue to Brazil, stating that, despite a slight improvement in the more democratic attendance at museums, this is still a practice that is outside the interests of the majority of the Brazilian population (peripheral and worker). But the problem, for the author, does not end there. If, as a public, non-white populations are still rare in museum institutions, these, in turn, continue to be managed by mostly white staff: “When looking at the governing and management body – artistic and executive, including advisors and patrons –, the gap and disparity in representation of the different groups that make up society widens”.[6]
The author will also allude to the series of lootings that colonial powers carried out of the production of various non-white cultures, paying attention to a fact of great interest: the fact that in European museum spaces, these looted ethnographic collections are treated within a practice that make them equivalent to works of art. She declares, referring to the Humboldt Forum, in Berlin, that, upon receiving a collection of more than 70.000 objects from Africa, she transformed it: “the ethnographic collection with an air of equivalence to a work of art. Of course, the artistic value of such objects should not be diminished, however, it does not seem coherent to camouflage the countless coercions printed in the flow that led them to the institution that now houses them.[7].
Back in the Brazilian scene, Amanda will remember some initiatives in the museum field that served to meet the demands of marginalized social groups, such as black people (the Museu de Arte Negra, by Abdias Nascimento), indigenous people (the Museu do Índio, by Darcy Ribeiro) and the one dedicated to people with mental disorders (the Museum of the Unconscious by Nise da Silveira). Amanda remembers that such institutions, however:
While meeting the demands of contestatory movements, they also reproduced exclusionary patterns, whether in a benevolent or authoritarian way, especially around gender and racial discrimination and oppression, more in their hierarchical structures and occupation of positions of power than in their collections, although the first is contained in the second.[8]
Faced with this complex situation in which structurally prejudiced actions and behaviors regarding race and gender prevail even in initiatives that aim to address the breakdown of privileges in museums, Carneiro asks himself how, even so, to decolonize museums? Not being just a rhetorical question, the author then begins to bring her text to the end, stating that the terms diversity, plurality, multiculturality, decoloniality and decolonization cannot be confused. For Amanda, they are not synonymous and using them in this way can inadvertently end up meeting the interests of pool owners (to reuse the metaphor coined by Lima).
According to Amanda, a diverse museum will not necessarily be decolonial. For her, the fact that an institution exhibits and has in its collection works by black artists, women, transgender and indigenous people does not transform it into a decolonial institution. And this is because, even in museums with this new profile, the author does not perceive any structural change in the canons that govern the hierarchy behind choices in purchases and exhibitions. All the diversity of the works is subject to only Eurocentric values that still guide the policies of most museums.
To make the situation even worse, all these institutions, even those that seek greater diversity, are immersed in what the Peruvian intellectual Aníbal Quijano, at the end of the last century, defined as “coloniality”. It will, then, only be at this moment that Amanda will explain what she understands by the terms “coloniality', “decolonize', previously only suggested. To this end, she states that, from Quijano's point of view:
[…] if knowledge is under the influence of coloniality, the endeavor to decolonize it is essential. Even after the end of colonial periods in previously subjugated territories, coloniality persists in different ways over time and space. Following this line of reasoning, it is necessary to recognize that coloniality continues to manifest itself, including in the cultural sphere, where its detection and overcoming can be more complex.
And he ends his definition of Quijano's concept, stating: “Often, this notion of coloniality converges with other critical traditions that have distinct genealogies and interests, such as subaltern studies and post-colonial studies”.[9]
How can we break with this perennial condition, in a way, also structural of the process of coloniality? This is, in essence, the biggest and most interesting question that Amanda Carneiro faces in her essay, but of course I will not report here what the author proposes to overcome this impasse, or even if she will propose any possibility of overcoming it. May the reader be interested in knowing how the intellectual concludes her essay, as I mentioned before, one of the most interesting in The black man in the pool.
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With other contributions signed by Jaider Esbell, Daniel Lima, Rosana Paulino and Claudinei Roberto da Silva, among others, The black man in the pool. Contemporary art, curation and education arrives at the forefront and soon establishes itself as a fundamental contribution to criticism and the history of art in the country – the first major collective work, as far as I know, which, in book form, comes to confront the emergence of these non-white intellectuals and critics and all the challenges they bring and establish at the heart of the power of contemporary art in Brazil.
May the major themes raised and discussed in the pages of the book reach other corners and cause new debates to proliferate that help to clear the shadows and halftones that hover over the practice of art and criticism in the country. Impossible to read The black man in the pool and not noticing that it is more than necessary to explain the contradiction in continuing to think of Brazilian artistic production only as a continuity of artistic and aesthetic values imported (or “inherited”, as some want) from Europe and/or the United States.
Despite the fact that most of the questions raised in The black man in the pool also emerged from the importation of themes originally raised in the United States, there seems to be no doubt that they, duly swallowed by our circumstances, can provide important subsidies so that the debate here takes on other and more interesting contours.
[1] – These changes, we must not forget, have their earliest origins at the beginning of this century, a period of approval of laws that – concrete consequences of the struggle of organized black movements – created conditions for the changes that occurred in the lives of non-white communities from the country.
[2][2] – LIMA, Diane. “Blacks in the pool: contemporary art, curation and education” In LIMA, Diane (org.). Black people in the pool. Contemporary art, curation and education. São Paulo: Fósforo, 2023 p. 16.
[3] – LIMA, Diane. Op. Cit. p.22.
[4] – CARNEIRO, Amanda. “Violently peaceful: art, decoloniality and institutional insertion”. In LIMA, Diane (org.). Black people in the pool. Contemporary art, curation and education. São Paulo: Fósforo, 2023 p. 51.
[5] - Op. Cit. p. 52.
[6] - Op. Cit.
[7][7] - Op. Cit. p.53
[8] - Op. Cit. p. 54.
[9] -
