Arte com e contra o arquivo: ensaios de um negro artista sobre memória, artes visuais e narrativas afro- brasileiras

Abstract

This thesis has as its main axis to point out how the practice of Visual Arts contributes to wonder the historical archives. By crossing an analysis of artistic poetics, body memories, collective narratives and unraveling works of art, the text reveals how the archives related to the Afro-Brazilian populations tell us an official history, at the same time that - when investigated with more complexity and bringing observations from subaltern knowledges - testify against this same view now taken as the only truth. Written through essays, the thesis brings in each of its parts specific episodes that serve as a backdrop for an investigation into the links between art, archives and history. Following a path that weaves together personal narratives with collective backgrounds, the text originates the writing of an artist-researcher – who takes advantage of these two different positions to promote different flows between artistic and academic production. The thesis draws on references that permeate the fields of Visual Arts, History, black intellectual production and activism and decolonial studies in an attempt to establish interdisciplinarity as a way to resolve issues related to the right to memory and racism structural. The author asks what comes to the fore when the Visual Arts cross the walls of institutionalized spaces and begin to walk the paths of history production, scrutinizing which other archives could be analyzed so that we do not have, even today, an exclusive official history.