Though it’s dark, still I sing, Works from the 34th Bienal de São Paulo

About the statement The Portraits of Frederick Douglass
Born in Talbot County, Maryland (USA), in February 1817 (or 1818, depending on source), Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was the son of an enslaved black mother and a probably white father who never recognized him – perhaps the plantation owner or overseer where his mother was forced to work. Despite numerous obstacles, he learned to read and write in his childhood and adolescence. He even organized literacy classes for other enslaved people like him. After some unsuccessful attempts, in 1838 he managed to flee to New York, which had abolished slavery in 1827. However, the dread and insecurity caused by slave catchers forced him to quickly move to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he adopted the Douglass surname. Eloquent, charismatic and having lived realities that gave him a powerful perspective on society, Douglass promptly began an extraordinary career as a writer, orator, politician and, above all, activist for the abolition of slavery – which only became a reality in the United States in 1865. He became one of the most acclaimed and admired figures in the anti-slavery struggle. In 1895, when he died, Douglass was regarded as one of the most important men in US history.

In 1841, Douglass commissioned his first photographic portrait. He was fully aware that his image as a free black man could reverberate and amplify the anti-slavery fight. In a pioneering way, Douglass realized that the extensive circulation that the photographic medium allowed would be of utmost importance in helping the anti-racist struggle and the fight against post-abolition segregation. No wonder, over the next five decades or so, he would become the most photographed person in nineteenth century America, demonstrating enormous mastery over his pose, dress, appearance, and framing. This unique portrait corpus is presented in the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, in almost its entirety, for the first time as part of an art exhibition.

Under Douglass’ penetrating and challenging gaze, works produced in different moments and contexts weave a complex and rhizomatic narrative, which reaffirms the importance of looking back, today, to the displacement, violence and resistance processes that scarred and continue to wound the lives of uncountable people. In these works, flows of images, cultures, and bodies intersect. They are the witnesses of the possibility to metabolize past and present traumas as fuel to demand the construction of the foundations of a fairer future.

About the statement The Death Watch [A Ronda da Morte] by Hélio Oiticica
Hélio Oiticica (b. Brazil, 1937 – 1980) lived in New York during the military dictatorship’s most violent years, those after Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5) promulgation in December 1968. Back in Brazil in 1978, the artist realized he could no longer meet many of the people he befriended in Rio’s favelas and samba parties in the mid-1960s. He attributed these absences to the State’s systematic annihilation of part of the population. Shaken by the brutal execution of yet another of his friends in the following year, Oiticica wrote a letter to photographer Martine Barrat describing a “parangolé-area” called A Ronda da Morte [The Death Watch]. Similar to a black circus tent, it would be an inviting environment with strobe lights and music playing inside for people to come in and dance. While the party would go on inside the tent, horseback men emulating a police patrol would surround it.

The work, which was never carried out, was planned to be presented for the first time in 2020 for the 34th Bienal. This was made impossible due to the pandemic. However, A Ronda da Morte, represented by archival documents, was incorporated as a statement, in dialogue with works that had already been exhibited in past Biennials – as the present mobilizes the opportunity to revisit its original meaning, or even to elaborate on it – as well as alongside works that address situations of State violence and stress the limit between past and present and the idea of repetition in history.

About the statement The Bell of Ouro Preto 
The Capela de Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens Brancos [Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary of the White Men], most commonly known as Padre Faria Chapel, is a small church in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, which has a bell tower that bears a bronze bell that was cast in Germany in 1750. On April 21, 1792, this bell was the only one in the colony to toll in open disobedience to the official order that forbade homage to the crown’s enemy. The bell tolled as regret for Tiradentes’ execution, the only Inconfidência Mineira [Minas Gerais Conspiracy] participant whose death sentence was not revoked. With the independence of Brazil and the Proclamation of the Republic, the Minas Gerais’ martyr was declared a national hero. And the bell that tolled in his homage became a symbol of the struggle for the country’s sovereignty and, in 1960, on another April 21, it was taken to Brasília, hoisted beside a replica of the cross used in the first mass held in Brazil, and rang for the new capital’s inauguration.

At the 34th Bienal, the statement raises questions such as: what does it mean, today, to look again at this bell so strongly marked by the history of the colonial period, to feel the time that continues to settle on it? What echoes from Brazil and the world reach, today, to the old Vila Rica and reverberates in the bronze of this bell?

About the statement Tikmũ’ũn Songs
The Tikmũ’ũn, also known as Maxakali, are Indigenous people from the area that today encompasses the Minas Gerais, Bahia, and Espírito Santo states. After countless and recurrent episodes of violence and abuse dating to colonial times, the Tikmũ’ũn came to the brink of extinction in the 1940s and were forced to abandon their ancestral lands to survive. Songs organize life in the villages, constituting almost an index of all the elements of their daily lives, like plants, animals, places, objects, knowledge, and of their rich cosmology. Often intended for healing, most of these songs are collectively sung. 

In the context of an exhibition conceived, lyrically and metaphorically, in and through the songs’ necessity and power, the example of the Tikmũ’ũn resonates powerfully, also from a political point of view: the community effort is renewed constantly through their singing to collectively create a universe. In the 34th Bienal de São Paulo’s traveling exhibition, around this statement are grouped works that address reflections on the need to preserve the environment and safeguard cultures and knowledge that are transmitted orally from generation to generation, such as the Tikmũ’ũn songs.