america: democracia racial, melting pot and pureza de razas, 2019
drawing made with black pemba (chalk used in rituals of Umbanda) and dermatographic pencil on raw cotton
140 x 190 cm
photo Filipe Berndt
The series of works “democracia racial, melting pot and pureza de razas” recreates, from the illustrations of maps and nautic charts, one of the most iconic scenes in the recent history of mankind - the navigations and the “discovery of the new world”. However, unlike the original version, with colors ready to portray the exuberance of the newly explored region, operates a visual downgrade, guided by white on black. It is, therefore, A retelling of the first effort regarding the representation of the settlement system, and its logging and indigenous labor exploitation, the first proletariat of what later would be consolidated as a “continent”.
On these letters, the presence of the native population is marked by human figures in nudity situation scattered from the coastal to the central part of the continent. In these drawings, there are men hunting with bow and arrow, cutting trees and in contact with wildlife. In an allegory of work and leisure. The harmony found, and exalted, in the original is disturbed by the inscription of the terms democracia racial, melting pot and pureza de razas taken from books that guide the construction of the history of the Americas and its past of slavery and racial segregation. This operation reinforces this violence in the illustrations, and in the “ Invention of the American continent”.
americae sive quartae orbis partis nova et exactissima: democracia racial, melting pot and pureza de razas, 2019
drawing made with black pemba (chalk used in rituals of Umbanda) and dermatographic pencil on raw cotton
181 x 149 cm
photo Filipe Berndt