MS01.03.03.B07.F09.0017

draft proposal
INTROSPECTIVES
CONTEMPORARY ART BY AMERICANS AND BRAZILIANS OF AFRICAN DESCENT

CONTEMPORARY ART BY AMERICANS AND BRAZILIANS OF AFRICAN DESCENT

Objective

The CAAM seeks -funds -for an exhibition that explores in the art
of contemporary Afro-Americans and Afro—Brazi1ians the
fundamental issue o-f identity: how these artists view themselves
in relation to their African heritage, their status as citizens,
and their communities.

Background

The histories of peoples of African descent in the New World,
while distinct in many ways, are bound together by issues of
color and slavery. In Brazil, more than four million Africans
were brought over during the 300 years of slavery. The
conditions of their bondage in Brazil varied according to region
and historical period. As policies of inter—marriage developed,
the nature of slavery depended on one's shade of blackness.
Thus, for various reasons, certain aspects of African culture
were able to survive and some even thrived despite repeated
attempts to destroy them. This, together with the massive influx
of primarily Yoruba people from West Africa throughout much of
the 19th century and up to the end of slavery, assured the
continuity of an African identity alongside an emerging Brazilian
one.

In America, a briefer period of slavery involving smaller munbers
of Africans under more stringent conditions made the continuation
of African lifestyles more difficult. Here the color line was
drawn in blood. Despite such conditions, or perhaps because of
them, Afro-Americans creatively transformed their African-ness to
confront a new reality. These worst of times demanded the
deepest, strongest convictions about self-hood and self-worth.
From such challenges, they forged new cultural and artistic
traditions to shape and express their African-Americanness.

The definitions of self emerging among Afro-Brazi1ians and
Afro-Americans and those imposed upon them during the period of
slavery officially ended with Emancipation (1863 in the US, 1888
in Brazil). Emancipation changed everything, and it changed
nothing. It altered the legal status of people from property to
persons and promised freedom and equality, but it changed little
in the real lives of blacks. The contradiction between the ideal
and the real created by the Emancipation is a fundamental reason
why self-indentity has been and continues to be such a compelling
issue in the work of Afro-American and Afro-Brazi1ian artists.
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