An exhibition corrects the Black Lagoon in the history of Brazilian art

Dos Brasis: Arte e Pensamento Negro (From the Brazilians: Black Art and Thought) is a notable exhibition within the Brazilian art world, as it brings together works by 240 black artists from all over the country. Divided into seven thematic cores, the exhibition addresses issues such as historical revisionism and female representation, highlighting stories such as that of Judith Bacci, who became an artist from a janitor.

Judith Bacci is a practically unknown artist in the world of visual arts. She had her debut not at a vernissage, but as a goalkeeper at the premises of the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Pelotas, a city in the south of Brazil, a country divided by a social abyss that makes the social advancement of a goalkeeper or a Black woman. Judith ended up becoming an assistant in sculpture classes and, over time, became an artist. She had little impact, she was a victim of racism. The students of the Ufpel arts course, however, considered her an unofficial teacher of the Sculpture discipline. She knew like few others the difficulties of the sculptor's profession and shared her knowledge with her students, almost all of whom were white. She never received a teaching salary or recognition. That is, until now, the exhibition has been opened in San Pablo.

In the exhibition Dos Brasis, Judith participates with a small plaster sculpture that portrays a Black nurse feeding a white baby. Simple and sublime, the work is one of the great moments offered by the exhibition. It also summarizes the biography of the artist, who fed and raised children of white families without being recognized. And finally, it refers to an entire legacy of slavery and an entire race relationship that permeates the art world, which, despite ancient and recent efforts, is full of erasures like that suffered by Judith Bacci.

With 240 artists and more than 400 works, Dos Brasis: Arte e Pensamento Negro is being celebrated as the exhibition with the largest number of Black artists held to date in the country. The exhibition of the works begins at the gate of the Sesc Belenzinho, in São Paulo, and occupies the entire patio, the works mix with the children's play area and the sports fields (we will return to this point), before accumulating in two exhibition areas and a hall. If art were a relay race, Dos Brasis would surely obtain a place on the podium: in addition to the record of Black artists that it brings together, there are names from all states, in addition to the most diverse genres from the 18th century to the present. Many of the artists, like Judith Bacci, have a production that is as fruitful as it is ignored. Except that Dos Brasis is much more than a one-time exhibition. We are talking about a long-term project that plans to travel throughout the country over the course of a decade. In addition to traveling clippings of the exhibition that is in Cartaz, there is an educational and debate project. It is expected that in ten years the success of the project will make it no longer necessary. Evidently, all the richness of the project is proof of the dimension of the art produced by Black Brazilian artists. It is increasingly embarrassing for a racist curator or critic to say that there are no Black artists. Not only do they exist, they have been here forever. “The silence of Black artists never existed. What existed was a selective listening to Black artists,” said curator Igor Simões. It is that erasure that is being reversed. That is why it is especially important that Dos Brasis' starting base is Sesc Belenzinho.
A little context: the Sesc is a private entity, maintained by a forced collection calculated according to the payroll of each company. With this resource, health services, dentists, entertainment, sports and food are financed at low prices. Culture corresponds to a small part of the Sesc budget. The visual arts, then, have even fewer resources.

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An exhibition corrects the Black Lagoon in the history of Brazilian art