Yes, now we are all black! Article 14 of the 1805 Haitian Constitution, written after the only black uprising in the Americas took over power, indicates a political situation in which we fight to express a voice that has been historically silenced. Here, this voice sings the fight of the urban quilombo to reach all of those who were and are excluded by the hegemonic powers.
No, now we are not all black! Have institutions now understood that colonization traumas do exist? Have they now understood that the racial democracy discourse is a fallacy? No! We are not all black! We, black people, continue to live as targets of violence, silencing, and exclusion. No, we are not all black. This is a continuous fight for survival in which we must recognize the specificities of an African American trajectory.
Yes, now we are all black! We could say that, in the history of Brazilian contemporary art, nearly all exhibitions have tacitly called themselves “We have always been all white”—because, here, the black presence in the contemporary art scene has always been an exception. The exhibition AGORA SOMOS TODXS NEGRXS? [NOW ARE WE ALL BLACK?] gathers works created by part of the new generation of African Brazilian visual artists. A generation marked by the maturing of discussions on racial issues in Brazil and in the Americas, as well as by its cross-relation with gender identity and transgender issues.
No, now we are not all black! A contemporary art created from the perspective of negritude that challenges the perspectives of the decolonization of America. A generation that intends to deconstruct the triple trauma of colonization (extermination of indigenous populations, slavery, and religious persecution) through the micropolitical power of art, by rejecting stereotypes in a battle for life forces against extermination forces. A dispute to reconstruct our history and our world, our way.
X as an update. X as non-capturable historic statement. X as plot.
Daniel Lima
curator