Walls of Ar - Brazilian Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2018 [English]

Walls How did Brazilian slavery’s historical condition generate a legacy of social and racial boundaries in the cities of our country?

Brazil presented a very significant urban slavery. In 1850, 42% of Rio de Janeiro population consisted of slaves: 110 thousand slaves out of 266 thousand inhabitants, the greatest urban concentration of slaves since the end of the Roman Empire. The massive presence of free black people merged with a population of still enslaved blacks led the former to live in a situation of inferior citizenship. Some fleeing slaves would go to Floresta da Tijuca quilombo, others would remain in the city, mixing with free blacks.

Wearing shoes meant a black person was free, for slaves were not allowed to do so.

Neither were they supposed to walk alone in the streets after 9 in the evening without their owner’s order and could be questioned by the police any time. This situation caused a deep-rooted contempt in relation to free blacks, creating a pattern of disrespect toward black people well before the abolition of the slavery in 1888.

Evidence How does social and racial segregation, perpetuated since colonization, show up today in urban space?

In São Paulo, the result appears in the profile of those clubs that intend/purport to be elegant, dating from the 1920s. They excluded the presence of blacks in internal regulations, rejected black members without any explanation—because not to be written in was part of Brazilian racism.

This implemented such a real model of segregation, up to the point, for instance, of allowing black fellows to be violently questioned by the police for their black skin, and for being in a car. In slaughters, such as the one at Carandiru Penitentiary, in 1992, most of the dead are always black.

The bullet knows its target when the police fires.