Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
Procurando Jesus was created when I was in Amman, Jordan, in 2013, during a residency program at the Darat Al Funun Foundation. That experience made me question the image of the blond, blue-eyed Jesus we have in Brazil and in the West. While living there, it became clear to me that Jesus must have looked like one of those men I observed among the local population. There was something subversive about thinking of Jesus as being part of the people—imagining his personality, his manners, the tone of his voice. So I set out to photograph 20 men in the streets with my cell phone, and organized an open voting, in which I offered dates to the passersby and asked them to use the seeds to vote for the next possible image of the historical Jesus.
Based on that idea I began to think about the links between the Middle East and the Brazilian and Latin American context. I came to the conclusion that this project is about judgment and how Eurocentric aesthetics is not only an imposition, but also an impostor and oppressor. The ideal of white, blond, blue-eyed beauty is a distortion that affects both Brazil, a Latin country, and the Middle East. The desiring gaze towards black and mestizo bodies takes on a fetishistic character, and when looking for Jesus, the searching gaze falls into the same trap, and is only offered the experience and discomfort of the fiction of that gaze.
In my work, this relationship of the gaze stems from the presence of desire as a tool that destabilizes the interpretation of relationships and their forces, especially regarding sexist societies, such as in Brazil and in Latin and Muslim countries, and also the issue of the male body in this relationship, a strong presence in my work. Such a gaze generates a number of discomforts that are revealing of social forces. It involves my role of artist as a mediator and stressor of signs, and the role of the audience itself, uncomfortable or not in their judgment.