Paulo Nazareth: Phambi Kwendlovu by Stevenson

Paulo Nazareth

PHAMBI KWENDLOVU

Paulo Nazareth

PHAMBI KWENDLOVU

Paulo Nazareth

PHAMBI KWENDLOVU

To the People of the Diaspora, the Ancestors, and My Mother

9 Make for where the August hams grow Sisipho Ngodwana 37 Works 129 Pamphlets 153 [Portuguese translation] Vá em direção aos presuntos de agosto Sisipho Ngodwana 170 Artist biography 172 Acknowledgments

Make for where the August hams grow ----------------

Project: _breathes deep _lengthen the entire spine _relax the whole body _let the body walk without prey _ choose / elect any point on the globe. country, region, city. large numbers of migrants _elect another point of great exodus [migrants / immigrants] _walk toward the point of migration and _move in a direction contrary to the migratory flow

Sisipho Ngodwana --------

Make for where the August hams grow

What does this mean? In order to answer the question correctly, we will have to go back and forth between times, analogies and perceptions. For the sake of language, we will start in the middle – this is an anecdote of a stone.

LINE HAIR, 2019 Found objects (stone, synthetic hair) 35 × 95 × 75cm

Sisipho Ngodwana

LINE HAIR was produced using found objects: a large stone and synthetic hair. On the rock are three drawings – outlines of Africa, Asia and South America. The composition was made at Breaking Bread, an independent project space in Rugby, Cape Town, that offers artist’s residencies. It is here that Paulo Nazareth lived for three months, from December 2018 to February 2019, along with his mother, Mama Ana, his partner, Luciana, and their two children, Gabriel and Maria. Two months into their stay, a colleague and I were invited for a studio visit, ‘an exhibition at home’, as Nazareth jokingly referred to it. Upon our arrival, being hospitable, Nazareth walked us through the house that held the exhibition, which began behind the front door and continued to the final bedroom located at the opposite end. He later titled this exhibition ENKOSI, UMOYA WABUYA (‘Thank you, the spirit has returned’). As we were walking back, he stopped to speak about the work, and LINE HAIR became the introduction to this project. At first, the sight of a large stone placed on repurposed hair was singularly unsettling. I couldn’t help but ask why he had decided to use these materials. His response was, ‘Well, in Brazil hair is like memory and a lot of Black people either cut or straighten their hair as a result of racial attitudes towards Blackness and beauty.’ ‘If that is the case,’ I continued, ‘why is there such a large stone placed on the hair?’ ‘Because the stone is like memory too,’ he concluded.

Make for where the August hams grow

The middle –

In 1488, the Portuguese set off on an expedition towards the south of Africa to explore possible trade routes between Europe and Asia. The circumnavigation of the continent is said to have not been easy to achieve, or indeed survive, due to the unexpectedly treacherous climatic conditions. Reflecting on their travails, the Portuguese named their entryway into Southern Africa Cabo das Tormentas (‘Cape of Storms’). Nazareth recalls the history of such colonial quests, from Europe to Asia, as being interrupted by a ‘large stone’ on the way. This large stone was Africa. Following many campaigns of plunder, South Africa became an established mineral-mining portal for European countries, namely the Portuguese, the Dutch and, later on, the British. As a result, its name was changed from the Cape of Storms to the Cape of Good Hope, as it presented an opportune and lucrative route in the service of Europe and its goal of global economic expansion. Today, what is known as the Cape of Good Hope is a headland consisting almost entirely of rocky mountains surrounding the south-westernmost point of the continent. So what does this mean? Nazareth makes a point of not shaving his hair; he sees this as an act of resistance made all the more poignant when he is politely asked his reasons for this refusal. It is in light of this that, in 2016, on his second visit to South Africa, he produced Pencil Test – for me stay here, a performance and video work that interrogates the lingering effects of South Africa’s Population Registration Act of 1950. The video, filmed by Nazareth with a handheld camera, shows passers-by perplexed yet amused at the act of putting pencils in a stranger’s hair. Under the apartheid regime, the ‘pencil test’ was a method of assessing which racial group a person belonged to by means of the insertion of a pencil in their hair. If the pencil fell out, they were classified as White; if it didn’t, they were classified as coloured. This system was designed in response to the irregularities that presented themselves with regard to the Population Registration Act. As this 12

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law required that each citizen of the country be classified in accordance with their ‘racial characteristics’, ambiguities frequently arose with skin tones imparting conflicting messages according to the established structures. When these frictions became widespread, the ‘pencil test’ became the new taxonomy, through which one’s hair was made a subject of political pandemonium. In LINE HAIR, the hair is thus a catalytic remnant of oppression, of culture and of space. But the stone, too, is a fragment of dismembered lands, misplaced bodies and forgotten ancestry. To Nazareth, the ‘large stone’ is as much a heavy burden as it is a totem of our past and our present. While its weight is both physical and psychological, he remarks that ‘it is in the heaviness of the stone where one can truly find reason to free themselves’, because the ‘large stone’ remains in our psychologies, histories and memories, whether we like it or not. When I asked Nazareth about the somatic and psychic damage that the carrying of the stone has on the immediate body, his response was, ‘Well, if someone is tired of carrying the stone, they can put it on the ground, sit on it and rest. Alternatively, they can ask someone else to help them carry it.’ 13

Still from Pencil test – for me stay here, 2017, video performance, duration 19 min 3 sec

Make for where the August hams grow

So what do we mean when we speak of the carrying of this ‘large stone’? Nazareth’s temporary relocation to Cape Town was motivated by his ongoing personal calling to probe the numerous slave routes – tracing the movement of slaves from the start of colonisation – in order to bring to life people, places and humanities that were erased in the process. Based in Palmital (‘Palm Tree’), he began by visiting countries that the Portuguese had colonised, traded with, and taken slaves to or from. His starting point was his place of birth, Porto da Figueira (‘Port of Fig Tree’), a village on the banks of Vale do Watu (‘Valley of Big Rivers’ or ‘Great Waters’). This was the name given to the area by the Krenak people who resided in this part of Minas Gerais before colonial occupation. Today, the river is called Rio Doce, meaning ‘Sweet River’. In 1937 the region was named Governador Valadares in honour of its governor at the time, Benedito Valadares. On his place of birth, Nazareth remarks: Porto da Figueira was a military post in Vale do Rio Doce in Boruns and Quilombolas lands.1 From this post the White invaders, Europeans of German and Italian origin, in addition to the Portuguese, made the dirty war against the Indians and Quilombolas and colonised those lands. I was born in Morro do Carapina,2 when the city was already called Governador Valadares who was named governor of the State of Minas Gerais by the then dictator Getulio Vargas. What I do is to confirm the previous name of the people, thus refusing the gentile Valadarense referring to the interventor. My job is to de-nominate, to return to previous senses ... I am Nazareth from Vale do Watu, heir to the Borum people. Since the beginning of his journey, he has walked his way to adjacent states, neighbouring South American countries, North America, Africa and Asia. His practice has become grounded in Africa and its diaspora, with Africans, Afro- and 14

1 Quilombo is the denomination for communities of Black people who had escaped enslavement in Brazil. 2 Morro do Carapina was the name of the region before it was changed to Governador Valadares. The region was established roughly around the 16th century by European settlers who had sailed along the Doce River in search of precious metals, including the extraction of gold.

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indigenous Brazilians, and African and Native Americans as his guides. He adapted and evolved the practice of a flâneur into that of a trecheiro, a Portuguese term meaning ‘one who walks long distances by foot’. Nazareth elaborates: Trecheiro comes from trecho (‘the stretch’). Trecheiro or trechero is the one who walks on the trecho, the one who is on the stretch, the one who walks the stretch … but it is not a term that is widely used outside of this ‘community’, it is an internal term … But the walker walks great distances, crosses a country of continental dimensions … Each walker has a reason to be on the stretch to make his walks, the walker lives on the stretch, he lives on the road … there are those who have been walking for a year, and there are those who are walking for a lifetime, something like 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 years or more … there are those who die on the stretch and there are those who are born on the stretch … most of the stretches (‘walkers’) are men, but there are many women on the stretch … it is a hard life, of many deprivations, but it is also a life of freedom where such individuals are not subject to the laws of the market … it is a way of life. And while a single person may bear the weight of a large stone, the stretch bears the weight of a world that is both erased and remembered. 15

12:42 SAST, 14 October 2019. En route to the Ludzindzini Royal Residence in Lobamba, Nazareth took a seat to set up his brown-beer-bottle-lens camera Photo: Sisipho Ngodwana

Make for where the August hams grow

My first experience of walking with Nazareth was in Brazil. We met at a hotel lobby, on our way to an event. ‘Shall I get an Uber?’ I asked. ‘No, it’s very close, we can take the train and walk from there,’ he said. In partial disbelief, I turned to a friend of his for confirmation. ‘Well, because of traffic, it might be better to take the subway,’ she concurred. I responded with a doubt-filled, ‘OK’. Two-and-a-half hours later, we were still walking – despite, of course, having missed the opening. At that moment I realised Nazareth’s perception of time and space was of a completely different order to that of the rest of us. It was also on this day that I asked Nazareth why he walked everywhere he went. His response, remarkably simple, was: ‘Well, because I want to feel the earth on my feet.’ ‘But why, Paulo?’ ‘Well, because it is important to me that I feel the earth and I want to meet and spend time with people along the way.’ ‘But why, Paulo?’ ‘Well, because there is a lot of confusion within the Black communities in Latin America.’ For Nazareth, the act of walking became about the act of remembering. Through a direct relationship with the shifting ground beneath him, walking became a vehicle for uncovering the memory of the country of his birth, where forgetfulness is seamlessly enforced even in its day-to-day social makeup.

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In May 2015, Brazil implemented the Portuguese Language Reform Law, initially attempted in 1911. The mandate of this law was to create a single orthography of the Portuguese language between Portugal and its former colonies. Alongside Brazil, these included Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Macau, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Principe, Equatorial Guinea and East Timor. Its objective was to standardise the written form of the language, essentially creating a homogeneous Portuguese language across the world, based on how it is spoken and written in Europe. But language will not obey. It is itself a maker of the status quo, such that even when we create new terminologies, they are never more than what language is willing to grant. Yet it refuses to remain static; it renders itself as more than just sound emitted when spoken, or through the gestures made with sign language. History and language are symbiotic to the point of synonymy, and they rely on each other significantly for self-preservation. In South Africa we have closely associated language planning with postcolonial pedagogy. The country’s historical situation, its multitude of cultures, existing legal and socio-political environments, as well as its memory, not only dictate the parameters through which reform is implemented but also inform the extent to which such change can be executed, and to the benefit of whom. Neville Alexander, a South African scholar of the politics of language, states that the system of language planning cannot easily be neutral because even when the impression of transformation is created, it hardly changes systemic discrimination as language itself is used to sustain cultural, socio-economic, political and environmental inequity.3 So, when Brazil legally erases indigenous cultures in favour of colonial apparatus and capital gain, the trecheiro becomes the one who documents their existence and possibly slows down the pace of extinction. It is in this context that language becomes an essential tool with which to build and articulate reality. In using a language, one is already employing a set of historical and cultural lenses through which reality is perceived, both internally and externally. Nazareth, who can now nominally converse in seven languages including 17

3 Neville Alexander, ‘The politics of language planning in post-apartheid South Africa’. In Language Problems & Language Planning 28:2 (2004), p114

Make for where the August hams grow

Swahili, isiXhosa and English, purposefully learns the language most commonly spoken in the cities he visits – because communication is the basis of interaction. One of the projects he devised for his visit to South Africa was to learn English. When asked why he chose to learn English in South Africa as opposed to the United Kingdom or the United States, his response alluded to the fact that language systems are not only aligned with culture but accurately reflect the country and its social habits. He remarks, ‘Language is the key to understanding people and their cultures. If you can’t even speak the people’s language, how can you claim to know them?’ – and what interactions may result if this, the basis of forming relationships, is fundamentally ignored? But, when Nazareth learns a new language, the result is always a ‘crippled’ version of the spoken language, because he mixes and loses the words and fixtures of grammar that others would deem essential. An inevitable question arises as to whether his intention is to craft an ability to communicate broadly – or, rather, to reverse the ramifications of colonial settlement by debilitating language, piercing longstanding cultural institutions and forcing a 600-year-long history to succumb to transformation.

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After the middle —

It may be said that the crossing of borders by foot resembles the journeying of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, a person much revered by Nazareth. Baquaqua was abducted from a region formerly known as Zoogoo (now the city of Djougou, located in the north-western part of Benin); like four million others, he was sent to Brazil and enslaved there. He wrote an autobiography titled An Interesting Narrative: Biography of Mahommah G Baquaqua (1854),4 based on his life before, during and after slavery. According to this account, he first worked for a baker in Pernambuco before being subjugated to a ship’s captain in Rio de Janeiro. In 1847, having sailed to the city of New York, he managed to escape, and spent at least two years in Port au Prince, Haiti. Baquaqua’s main route of escape was the Underground Railroad, a clandestine operation that acted against the enslavement of Black people across the Americas. The ‘route’ was a network of secret paths, meeting points and safe houses that helped move the enslaved from the south of the United States to the north, and to neighbouring countries where slavery had already been abolished. These countries included Mexico, Haiti and Canada, among others. Baquaqua’s biography states that he spent roughly three to four years moving between these countries before settling in the United Kingdom, all the while trying to find his way back home to Benin. Even while he was pursuing his studies at the New York Central College between 1850 and 1853, he was trying to persuade the authorities in New York to allow him to return to Benin as a missionary. However, the UK is where he was last seen or heard of. Nazareth remarks that ‘however true or false it may be, we believe that he made it home, but we also know that he would have gone to Africa at a time when the continent was severely under siege’. So Nazareth walks too, trying to uncover these ‘underground’ histories and essentially embarking on the circular path he believes was completed by Baquaqua. Occasionally he follows the directional waves from South America to Africa. At times he purposefully moves against them, going from South America to North America, then back through South America to Africa 19

4 An Interesting Narrative: Biography of Mahommah G Baquaqua was transcribed and published by American abolitionist Samuel Moore in 1854. For an electronic version, see http://abolition.nypl.org/ content/docs/text/bio_mahommah_ baquaqua.pdf

Make for where the August hams grow

on his way to Asia and back again through Africa on his way to South America. Much like ocean currents, migration seems not bound to a singular direction of movement. Like Nazareth’s perception of time, his journeys are not linear and thus his accounts of history sometimes delve into contemporary times only to redress what was old. _breathes deep _lengthen the entire spine _relax the whole body _let the body walk without prey _ choose / elect any point on the globe. country, region, city. large numbers of migrants _elect another point of great exodus [migrants / immigrants] _walk toward the point of migration and _move in a direction contrary to the migratory flow

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As a follow-up to ENKOSI, UMOYA WABUYA, Nazareth presented PHAMBI KWENDLOVU (‘Before the elephant’), his first solo exhibition with Stevenson, in 2019. At the time of the opening he remarked, ‘Nothing is ever the same, but nothing is ever gone.’ While this exhibition reimagines time as a spiral, it further explores the complex relationship between Africa, Asia and the Americas through works such as WHITENESS ETHNOGRAPHY [p106-113]. In this series Nazareth uses ‘found’ images that he gathers from historical archives on the internet. He photographs these off his laptop screen with his ‘special’ camera, the lens of which is covered with a shard of a brown beer bottle, before reprinting them. He then draws white circles on them with Efun powder. With regard to this series, he relates a Yoruba story: There was a village somewhere in West Africa where there was a crazy man, Mr Dead. The people say, Mr Dead was very crazy. He killed everybody, young, old, male, female, good people, bad people, he just went around killing people. He never thought about what he was doing, he just cared about killing people. But the people were very scared of Mr Dead so they prayed to Oshala for help. Oshala arrived and said, OK, I will think about it and I will find a solution for this. Oshala then took, in one hand, a black chicken and in the other, the Efun powder and blew it onto the chicken, making a storm of white powder. The Efun stuck onto the black chicken and then the guinea fowl was born. When Mr Dead came to do his job the next morning, he saw the new life. He saw the guinea fowl on the street and was very scared because there was new life and he didn’t know what to do because it did not exist yesterday. He was so scared and fearful of the new life that he turned away and vanished. And the people were saved. Nazareth has been using found photographic material since 2006, when he was on a residency in India – his first trip outside of Brazil. His flight from Minas Gerais to New Delhi went via Johannesburg – the flight path coincidentally taking the form 21

Top: 09:41 SAST, 15 October 2019. Nazareth picking up stones on Malagwane Hill in Mbabane, Eswatini, while doing Ginga, a soccer style and one of the fundamental movements of Capoeira. Some of these stones later formed part of artworks produced in South Africa Bottom: 12:56 SAST, 14 October 2019. Guinea fowl photographed near Ludzidzini Royal Village in Lobamba, Eswatini Photos: Sisipho Ngodwana

Make for where the August hams grow

of a semi-circle, and thus establishing the formula that Nazareth was to adopt as a fundamental basis through which he engages with the world and the making of his art. This formula now takes into account that of Baquaqua and moves in reverse of the migratory flow since the start of the Atlantic slave trade. In researching the history of movement, migration and slavery through books and the internet, Nazareth found the persistent presence of ethnographic material, collated by White Europeans, of Africans and the native populations of the Americas and Asia. These materials existed primarily as black and white photographs whose aim was create an ethnology of people from these continents. WHITENESS ETHNOGRAPHY uses these photographs as the foundation for the study of the construction of Whiteness and the birth of the colonial project. Nazareth discerns in the ethnographic photograph a manifestation of the myth of Blackness. The practice of such research, defined as ‘a detailed study of people, and their culture in their own environment by a researcher who is of a foreign culture or country’, reveals not the true account of its subjects but the intentions and psychological workings of Whiteness and the colonial predator. Nazareth, who sees the internet as a pool of archives that one can use without having direct contact with the people represented in it, remarks: I know that someone will take a picture of these works, returning them back into the circle of Samsara, but when they go back into the worldwide web, they will not be just another ethnographic replica because they will have the protection of the Oshala. In the same vein, the story of the unnamed village does not end with Mr Dead, the colonial predator; it ends with the people and the hand of the Oshala.

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Before the middle —

In 2013 Nazareth started an ongoing project titled The Red Inside, in which he traces the route of the Underground Railroad by walking from Brazil, through the United States, all the way to Canada. When Nazareth is not walking, he is accompanied by a group of friends and colleagues who assist him in driving a Ford van carrying watermelons. Some of these watermelons are organic, others replicas made from cement or mud that Nazareth collects from the Mississippi River. His conceptual framework makes reference to Fordism and its system of industrialised mass production, while invoking the historical and cultural significance of the Mississippi River and the American South. On the way, Nazareth plants watermelon seeds – a reference to the slaves who performed this act along the routes, not only as a marker of the escape path but for sustenance. The fruits were called ‘August hams’ by the freedom seekers. The phrase ‘make for where the August hams grow’ pointed to the route towards Betty Town in Beaufort County, North Carolina, which was known for its large population of free Black people. It was as a result of this that watermelons came to be seen as symbols of self-emancipation. However, they also appear in racist caricatures that depict African Americans as having an inordinate fondness for the fruit, and images of Barack Obama eating watermelon formed part of protests against his re-election in 2012. This is no irony – the fruit itself originated from Africa, and when slavery was abolished in the USA, watermelons became one of the dominant trading commodities among Black-owned businesses. The photographic series On the Rivers of the River [p78-81] forms part of the Red Inside project. Each photograph shows Nazareth along with one or two other participants standing in front of a single panel of the Vicksburg Riverfront floodwall mural that sits along the Mississippi River. Prior to European settlement, the town was home to the Natchez Native Americans who officially lost their place of dwelling in 1729 to the French colonists. On 4 July 1863, towards the end of the civil war, the Union successfully sieged Vicksburg, at this point the last remaining military port of the Confederate States. The siege resulted in the abolition of slavery 23

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with the adoption of the 13th Amendment, and the USA was declared a slave-free country in 1865, the same year that President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The murals are scenes from the Reconstruction era, depicting mostly romanticised events of the reverberating agricultural and economic growth that followed the war. This was, however, yet another period that saw an escalation of racist violence against the newly free Black population. The emancipation of Black people was represented as the result of the poverty and declining status of the White population. Violence and mass shootings would often result from confrontations such as a Black person refusing to take off their hat and bow to a White former master. Nazareth remarks that even with the declared emancipation of Black people, the violent culture from which America was built was still maintained in every aspect of American society — including even the adoption of the 13th Amendment. The Red Inside project can be understood as an ‘underground’ or subterranean map of the Americas and the world around it, where self-emancipation constantly finds itself negotiated and compromised. Exhibited adjacent to On the Rivers of the River, in PHAMBI KWENDLOVU, was a series of ‘machine drawings’ [p97-101], which further bring to light such systems that remain masked from our collective consciousness. These works imagine a representation of the post-industrial revolution era in which Nazareth’s birds may be interpreted as humans, trapped within the mechanical, reproductive ecosystem and social superstructures. These drawings invite us to relook at the subtle edifices that mask the cyclical ramifications of the centuries-old desire for slave-making.

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On Nazareth’s first entry into the continent in 2006, he started the ongoing project he named Cadernos de Africa (‘Notebooks from Africa’). The project, realised in various media, includes a series of pamphlets that become a collection of guides, presumably to Nazareth’s interactions with the people and things he encounters along his journeys within the continent. Of particular interest in these notes are space, place, and geopolitical systems and their relation to humans and nature. These texts, mostly written in Portuguese, often include simplistic English translations, clearly the work of Google Translate’s creolisation of the English language. _Look, mark, notice, record all instances of damage to the world _ Look, mark, notice, record every time a man causes damage to the world _ Look, mark, notice, record all times that the Earth is discovered _ Look, mark, notice, record all times in which oil is poured into water _ Look, mark, notice, record all the earth [that] is not dug to bury the dead

The result of his inquiry was the exhibition that first ‘opened at home’, ENKOSI, UMOYA WABUYA. Alongside LINE HAIR were works such as ELEPHANT REMEMBER OR ‘LE SOUVENIR’ [p38-39] and A MAZE [p41], in which objects were made subject to stone and brick. In A MAZE, a brick is placed on a corncob laid directly on the floor. We may assume that the work references the domestication of corn from Central America to Africa, where it is now called maize and has become one of the continent’s biggest home-grown crops. The pun in the title suggests that the expansion of the slave trade and the consequential economic growth in the West is as much a conglomeration of movement and displacement as it is a network of near-unfathomable and complex paths that demand further and sometimes involuntary migration. In South Africa we are reminded of the xenophobic attacks 25

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that pervade our immediate living spaces where the violence is subtly masked by a history of racism, poverty and resentment alongside continued displacement. We may further deduce that ELEPHANT REMEMBER OR ‘LE SOUVENIR’ reflects the subjection of animals and nature to human beings. During our conversation at Breaking Bread, Nazareth spoke of the history of elephants in circuses, recalling the story of the infamous ‘Murderous Mary’. This elephant was taken from Asia and sent to a circus in Tennessee, Mississippi. While performing at Sparks World Famous Shows, Mary killed her trainer after he probed her behind her ear. Spectators condemned Mary, calling out ‘Kill the elephant! Let’s kill it’. Mary was lynched using a railcar-mounted industrial derrick in front of a crowd of 2 500 spectators the following day. Nazareth’s exhibition PHAMBI KWENDLOVU further explores the significance of the elephant as both a physical remnant and a metaphorical resemblance of our memories. He says: You know, elephants don’t forget. We see our history through them and they help us remember because we forget. Both exhibitions unveil these erased histories. Moreover, they call us to account for the enduring, perverted refusal to acknowledge that African labour as slave power was the engine that drove manufacturing and industrial capitalism from as early as the 14th century. PHAMBI KWENDLOVU and individual works such as ELEPHANT REMEMBER OR ‘LE SOUVENIR’ prompt us to ask, what would be left of First World power if African power as slave labour was removed? In Nazareth’s recollection of this history he drew parallels between Mary’s fate and that of Saartjie Baartman. A Khoikhoi woman, Baartman was taken from the Eastern Cape and sent to England where she was exhibited as a subject of gruesome interest and sexual peculiarity. Due to the fascination with her body, and primarily her genitalia, the English audience would pay money to see her or 26

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touch her body. She was paraded at ‘freak shows’ across London and Manchester before being sold to a French animal trainer in Paris. Between London and Paris she was raped and impregnated as a scientific experiment by the animal trainer.5 Their daughter, named Okurra Reaux, passed away at the age of five; the cause of her death is unknown and her story remains a historical myth. Baartman died in Paris in 1815. Upon her death her body was dismembered, dissected, and her genitalia, brains and skeleton preserved in jars. A cast of her body was made and exhibited in museums and universities across Europe. In 2002, almost 200 years after her death, her remains were returned to South Africa at the request of Nelson Mandela and a community of Khoikhoi and Griqua people. In Baartman’s story of uncompensated labour, perceived deviance and invasive and ritualised exploitation, we see the operation of the colonial apparatus and Whiteness. Baartman’s story is not unique. As a teenage boy, Ota Benga was bought from slave traders in what was called the Congo Free State in 1903, while the country was under the control of the Belgian king, Leopold II. Benga was purchased for the 1904 World’s Fair in St Louis, Missouri, a celebration of American imperialism. The fascination with Benga was due to his ‘razor-sharp’ teeth that were the result of tooth chipping – a cultural custom among youths in the Congo. He was exhibited in a cage with animals at the Bronx Zoo until he became ‘uncontrollable’. Although the exhibition of Benga was a very successful publicity stunt,6 Black clergymen and women objected to his treatment and the racism it stemmed from. These objections later galvanised the daily protests that resulted in a court case being laid against the zoo.7 In his consistent refusal to perform for the audience, Benga threatened and attacked visitors and staff members. His demeanour eventually forced the zoo to release him into the custody of African American Reverend James Gordon who was among the clergymen and women leading the protests. Gordon housed him at the Howard Coloured Orphan Asylum, a church-sponsored orphanage for Black 27

5 ‘Sarah Baartman’, Wikipedia, accessed 24 October 2019. https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Sarah_Baartman 6 The exhibition of Benga is said to have brought in at least double the numbers of visitors to the zoo. After a New York Times report, published on 9 September 1906, Benga was reportedly moved from ‘a smaller chimpanzee cage to one far larger, to make him more visible to spectators’, where he was paired with an orangutan. Pamela Newkirk, ‘The man who was caged in a zoo.’ The Guardian, 3 June 2015. https://www. theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/03/ the-man-who-was-caged-in-a-zoo 7 Ibid.

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children and young adults. In 1910 Benga was relocated to the Lynchburg Theological Seminary and College due to continued press attention. Here, he shared a home with Mary Hayes Allen and her seven children. Six years later, at the age of 32, Benga committed suicide, shooting himself in the heart, in Lynchburg, Virginia. In linking the stories of Baquaqua, Baartman, Benga and Mary, all of which carry the weight of the making of our world, Nazareth remarks, It is good to remember that the elephant is also a metaphor of our historical memory. We know of the death of the elephant but we must also know of the death of women, men and children. They will use the elephant to hide everything. The elephant is good but you have to look beyond the elephant, like the story. And sometimes all we know of official history is fiction, a game of strength between that and oral history. It is incidents like these that prompted Nazareth to create the drawing series he named IMAGES THAT ARE ALREADY IN THE WORLD [p54-59, 68-71, 122-123]. Alongside this and WHITENESS ETHNOGRAPHY, the use of found material is explored further in CAMBURÃO ARCHIVE [p114-119], a series of paintings that depict police arrests of Black bodies. As the titles suggest, these drawings and paintings recreate existing photographic images that depict scenes of violence inflicted on animals and Black people, or show gruesome ethnographic interest in Africans and their customs. On first seeing these works, I asked Nazareth about his intention in using such violent archival photographic material and his response was: Well, because every day we see in the news and we hear on the radio about this violence. These images are very old – it’s old news. We say it’s old news because we hear the same thing every day and forget the people from yesterday … 28

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And as a result we become inured to seeing racial violence perpetrated on Black people. He continues: If I make the drawings, they will end up in a museum or a private collection. But we will see the same faces. It will not be old news because we will not forget the people’s faces.

Make for where the August hams grow

Untitled [OTHER STONE HAIR] [p42-43] consists of two stones that hang from two braids, and functions similarly to LINE HAIR. The work, although light in weight, appears to convey the tensions that exist between the ownership of land and servitude, as if to imply that humans are part of the balance of the earth. Put another way, the work affirms that even the culturally oppressed, the erased indigenes, the forgotten and the discarded, have an ultimate power in the progression of our world. Perhaps we should see land and water in the same light as humanity, because Nazareth persistently brings these phenomena together in hopes that they may lead him to the origins of his ancestors. His parents’ lineages combine the heredity of the Krenak, South American native, Italian and African people. _breathes deep _lengthen the entire spine _relax the whole body ...

When Nazareth landed in Cape Town, he asked for assistance in finding a job at a cemetery. The closest place that was willing to help was an Islamic burial site in Mowbray. He arrived precisely as the hired diggers began making room for a burial to be held later that day. Immediately he started digging, but moments later, as soon as the grave was deep enough, he stepped into it and lay still with his eyes closed and hands placed above his chest. He prayed for a few minutes, prior to the arrival of the deceased’s family, before stepping out and joining the ceremony. Of course, one wonders what his state of mind was, leading him to lie inside a grave, but looking back now to the day when we spent two hours walking towards an event that had passed, as if to say ‘we were there’, it has become clearer. At an ice-cream shop in São Paulo, three days after this first walk, Nazareth told me and another colleague a long-standing Brazilian narrative of the ocean. 30

Sisipho Ngodwana

He said that some of the older generations in Brazil thought of the ocean as a vessel through which worlds could connect. To them, he elaborated, ‘the Atlantic Ocean was not something that separated them from Africa, but was, rather, a phenomenon that could bring them closer to their ancestral lands’. He continued, The ocean is as much a formidable territory as it is a sanctuary, an asylum for those who died between Africa and the Americas. This is why Nazareth’s political history is marked so vividly by the passing on of his forebears. To him, a grave site is not a place of death but a place of remembrance. It is a space where the living can connect with those who have passed, bridging the superficial gap between the past and the present. So lying in a grave is a recognition of life as much as a defiance of time and death as we know it. 31

15:11 SAST, 20 December 2018. Nazareth assisting with preparations for a burial at the Mowbray Muslim Cemetery in Cape Town Photos: Nadia Essop

Make for where the August hams grow

Before the middle, we asked what Nazareth’s practice means in the midst of all these organised chaotic movements. The answer, I assume, is to exist aside from the paradigms of the burden he bears in the process of finding his way — between, to and from home. These journeys, instructions, maps, memoirs, recordings, sketches and findings all seek to recall the history of being displaced, where for the first time ‘that dead-weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem’8 is lifted. Be it in Africa, America or Asia, he holds as much memory of these continents as do the stones of the earth. ... _ let the body walk without prey _ choose / elect any point on the globe. country, region, city. large numbers of migrants _elect another point of great exodus [migrants / immigrants] _walk toward the point of migration and _move in a direction contrary to the migratory flow

However, navigating the histories of migration and racism is only a trajectory in Nazareth’s personal historical lineage, and that of Brazil. His mother, Mama Ana, has occupied a huge role in his practice, and continues to guide his path both spiritually and religiously. Her mother, Nazareth’s maternal grandmother, Nazareth Cassiano de Jesus, was a practitioner of Candomblé de Angola, an AfroBrazilian religion that is a synthesis of Yoruba, Fon and Bantu religious traditions. In 1944, De Jesus was abducted and taken to the Hospice de Barbacena, then colloquially known as Hospital Colônia. This was a psychiatric institution founded in 1903 in Barbacena, Minas Gerais, roughly 500 kilometres from Nazareth’s birth town. Here she was imprisoned due to her spiritual practice of Candomblé, which at the time was believed to be witchcraft or a sign of mental instability. De Jesus 32

8 WEB Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903, p5

Sisipho Ngodwana

died in this hospital in 1964, 20 years after her abduction. De Jesus is the biological and spiritual foundation for Nazareth and his artistic practice. His birth name is Paulo Sergio da Silva, but he chooses to use the name Paulo Nazareth in recognition of her as his founding guide. He remarks: Nazareth is the saint, the mother, because when Nazareth went to the hospital she lost her name and was changed into a ‘number’. He continues, We don’t know anything of her after the number. The hospital was Barbacena Hospital. Today the hospital functions as the museum of ‘craziness’. For many Brazilians, Hospital Colônia was effectively a concentration camp. Patients were forcibly admitted without diagnosis, and were tortured, raped and killed.9 Daniela Arbex, author of The Brazilian Holocaust, estimates that roughly 60 000 Brazilians, most of them Black, were murdered in the hospital, which only had the capacity to admit 200 patients. According to her, ‘at least 16 people died on a daily basis due to sickness, malnutrition, heat shock due to exposure to low temperatures, Scottish showers, electroconvulsive therapy, lobotomy, and murder.’10 The hospital is also believed to have smuggled corpses and body parts to universities across Brazil where Black people were not legally allowed to enter, except as mutilated body parts. Arbex further indicates that the bodies that were not sent to academic institutions were either buried in nearby fields or dissolved in acid. Forced to close in 1980, Hospital Colônia was reopened in 1996, only 16 years later, as the ‘Museum of Madness’, with some of the operational tools, equipment and laboratories left as artefacts. Yet Brazil’s history of genocides and incarceration of Black people remains veiled behind forced institutional erasure such as the Language Reform Law. 33

19:00 AEST, 8 March 2020. Nazareth and his mother, Gonçalves da Silva, leaving Cockatoo Island, a heritage site that was historically a penal establishment. Gonçalves da Silva accompanied Nazareth as his assistant for the installation of his INDIGENOUS LANDS at NIRIN, the 22nd Sydney Biennale Photo: Sisipho Ngodwana 9 Daniela Arbex, Brazilian Holocaust: 50 years without punishment, 2011. http://danielaarbex.com.br/tribunade-minas-november-20-2011/ 10 Ibid.

Make for where the August hams grow

When De Jesus was taken to Hospital Colônia, Ana Gonçalves da Silva was then adopted and raised in a Catholic home, a religious practice far removed from her mother’s. Nazareth’s uncle, Divino Gonçalves da Silva, who was De Jesus’s eldest child, was the only person who, through memory, was able to retain the practice of Candomblé. He was also a trecheiro and, according to Nazareth, had ‘disappeared on the road’, contact with him having been lost since 1990. The memory of a human being, unlike that of an elephant, sometimes fades and as a result histories are lost. However, even when memory can no longer fulfil its promise, the body, its name and the spirit within, carries that DNA. I think it is important to say about my work of being Nazareth, carrying Nazareth (De Jesus), and being carried by her, by this ancestral spirit. I am Paulo da Silva, Paulo Sergio da Silva … Da Silva is one of the most common surnames in Brazil … a large part of the enslaved became Da Silva because they were linked to slave-holding families, other times those who became free became Da Silva. It is a surname of the people of no family ... it is like that of unimportant people ... there are thousands of Da Silvas in Brazil and it is like being nobody … but I am still Da Silva, I am still Da Silva even when I become Nazareth ... but Nazareth is a TRABALHO, is a work, a mandinga, a voodoo to Nazareth Cassiano de Jesus … it’s a bow to my mother’s mother … it’s a bow to an ancestor, it’s one of the most important aspects in my work …

Sisipho Ngodwana

In 1974 an 11 500-year-old fossil was uncovered in the state of Minas Gerais. The fossil, found in a cave in Confins, is said to be the Upper Paleolithic period skeleton of a female Paleo-Indian. She was named Luzia in homage to the Australopithecus fossil Lucy, whose remains were found in Ethiopia earlier that same year. Lucy, although scientifically categorised as a homogeny of human and ape, is believed to be one of the oldest hominids at over 3-million years old. At the time when they uncovered her remains, Luzia, ‘luz’ meaning ‘light’ in Portuguese, was thought to have been part of the first wave of people to migrate to South America. Numerous anthropologists and scientists described the makeup of her skull as resembling those of ‘Negroids’, First Nations Australians, Melanesians, and the Negritos of Southeast Asia.11 Anthropologist Walter Neves, of the University of São Paulo, suggested that Luzia’s features strongly resembled those of the First Nations people of Australia and were unlike those of most natives of the Americas, as had been expected. Neves is also part of a group of Brazilian anthropologists who have speculated that Luzia’s Paleo-Indian predecessors lived in Southeast Asia for thousands of years after they had migrated from Africa.12 If we had to read Nazareth’s practice in a linear narrative, with the information and language we have available to us now, we would say that his work began somewhere in North or Northeastern Africa, with the migration of Luzia and the Borum people. We might even say that after they emigrated from Asia to Madagascar, they settled for some time in Australia; this has been contested, but that doesn’t mean it is not true. Perhaps, yes, it is not true because none of us who are here now were there then. But we should believe just as well that none of us would be here if it weren’t for them and global migration, so we were there then as much as they are here now. With the arrival of the Borum people in South America, Nazareth’s work took form and shape. It spoke the language of the people, and reflected all the faces of the earth. When he speaks of our predecessors, he is speaking of us, from somewhere in Africa, past the Mediterranean to Asia, possibly to Madagascar, then to Australia, then to the Americas, and back again. 35

11 The Guardian, 19 October 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2018/oct/19/brazil-nationalmuseum-fire-luzia-human-fossil-found 12 The New York Times, 21 October 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/ world/americas/brazil-museum-luziafossil.html

Make for where the August hams grow

This is the beginning of the anecdote of a stone —

TOMATO, 2019 Pencil, crayon, acrylic and found objects (stones, tomato) on paper 20 × 60 × 90cm; plinth 36.5 × 100 × 70cm

ELEPHANT REMEMBER OR ‘LE SOUVENIR’, 2019 Pencil, crayon, acrylic and found objects (stone, acrylic object) on paper 28 × 90 × 60cm; plinth 36.5 × 100 × 70cm

Untitled [I REMEMBER], 2019 Found objects (concrete, synthetic hair) 39.5 × 64.5 × 18cm

A MAZE, 2019 Found objects (concrete, corn) 16 × 47 × 18cm

Untitled [OTHER STONE HAIR], 2019 Found objects (stone, synthetic hair) 41.5 × 12.5 × 3.5cm

PRESIDENT, 2019 Pencil, crayon, acrylic and found objects (stones, Jacob Zuma ornament) on paper 18 × 90 × 60cm

FOR FORGET [NUESTRA LUTA], 2019 Pencil, crayon, acrylic and found objects (stone, paper cups) on paper 14 × 60 × 90cm; plinth 36.5 × 100 × 70cm

SHOE, 2019 Pencil, crayon, acrylic and found objects (stones, shoe) on paper 6.5 × 21 × 29.5cm

BASTON [STICK], 2019 Found objects (wooden stick, synthetic hair) 92.5cm

IVORY KNIFE, 2019 Found objects (ivory knife, synthetic hair, string, bricks) 23.5 × 25 × 15cm

EBONY KNIFE, 2019 Found objects (ebony knife, bricks) 36 × 15 × 11cm

OTHER KNIFE, 2019 Found objects (knife, bricks) 30 × 36 × 11cm

IMAGES THAT ARE ALREADY IN THE WORLD [DISPATCH FROM SOUTH: WHITE’S DRUG WAR KILLED BLACKS PEOPLE], 2019 Mixed media (pencil, crayon, masking tape and rice paper) on newsprint Set of 3, 18 × 17.2; 18.3 × 17.5; 18 × 18.5cm

IMAGES THAT ARE ALREADY IN THE WORLD [VOIATURE POLICE CAR OF BRASILIAN POLICE – MILITAIR TIMES], 2019 Mixed media (pencil, crayon, masking tape and rice paper) on newsprint Set of 2, 21.5 × 25.2cm each

IMAGES THAT ARE ALREADY IN THE WORLD [A FUNERAL PROCESSION FOR ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN BLACK, WHO WERE LYNCHED IN 1946 BY WHITE RACISTS PEOPLE], 2019 Mixed media (pencil, crayon, masking tape and rice paper) on newsprint Set of 3, 20.5 × 27; 21.5 × 27; 21.5 × 25.5cm

PUMPKIN SIMULACRUM, 2019 Pencil, crayon, acrylic and found objects (stones, acrylic object) on paper 25.5 × 90 × 60cm, plinth 36.5 × 100 × 70cm

COP BOOT BEAT, 2019 Found objects (stones, rubber boot) 40 × 35 × 30cm

RICORDI, 2019 Pencil, crayon, acrylic and found objects (stone, book) on paper 9 × 90 × 60cm, plinth 36.5 × 100 × 70cm

IMAGES THAT ARE ALREADY IN THE WORLD [TRADICIONAL AFRICAN FUNERAL/ SOUTH AFRICA], 2019 Mixed media (pencil, crayon, masking tape and rice paper) on newsprint Set of 6, 21.5 × 26cm each

IMAGES THAT ARE ALREADY IN THE WORLD [PAN-AFRICA — AFRO FUNERAL IN AMERICA FROM CIVIL RIGHT WAR. 1930], 2019 Mixed media (pencil, crayon, masking tape and rice paper) on newsprint 76.5 × 60cm

JAQUEIRA, 2017 Digital video Duration 4 min 44 sec

COLORED — WHITE, 2019 Inkjet prints Diptych, 70 × 90cm each

Dente de elefante, 2007 Digital video Duration 26 min

ON THE RIVERS OF THE RIVER, 2019 From the RED INSIDE series 25 inkjet prints 44.5 × 60cm each

ON THE RIVERS OF THE RIVER, 2019 Details (2 of 25 inkjet prints)

BEASTIARY OF CAPITAL — FROG, 2019 Malagasy banknotes on North American box elder 60 × 40 × 35cm

BEASTIARY OF CAPITAL — HORSE, 2019 Nigerian banknotes on Australian brush cherry 43.5 × 30 × 23cm

BEASTIARY OF CAPITAL — EAGLE, 2019 Zambian banknotes on North American box elder 114 × 18 × 16cm

BEASTIARY OF CAPITAL - HORSE, 2019 Nigerian banknotes on North American box elder 31 × 38 × 41.5cm

BEASTIARY OF CAPITAL — WATERBUCK, 2019 Congolese banknotes on North American box elder 44.5 × 34 × 33cm

BEASTIARY OF CAPITAL — DONKEY, 2019 Somalian banknotes on North American box elder 46 × 34.5 × 33cm

BEASTIARY OF CAPITAL — BIRD, 2019 Zambian banknotes on North American box elder 125 × 23 × 15cm

BEASTIARY OF CAPITAL — HUMMINGBIRDS, 2019 Zambian banknotes on North American box elder Diptych, 29 × 59 × 34cm, 28 × 46 × 31cm

KIABO, 2019 Tanzanian okra, Zimbabwean Binga baskets, carved and painted wood Dimensions variable Installation view and detail

DREAM COLLECTING MACHINE, 2019 Charcoal on newsprint 102 × 72cm

MAKE OTHER WORLD MACHINE, 2019 Charcoal on newsprint 102 × 72cm

FEAR SCARIG MACHINE, 2019 Charcoal on newsprint 102 × 72cm

MACHINE TO MAKE GOOD HOPE, 2019 Charcoal on newsprint 102 × 72cm

MACHINE TO RELAUNCH WITHOUT CEASING TO THINK AFTER THE FIGHT, 2019 Charcoal on newsprint 102 × 72cm

MACHINE TO TALK ABOUT PEOPLE WHO ARE GONE BUT STILL HERE, 2019 Charcoal on newsprint 102 × 72cm

COURAGEOUS MACHINE TO FIGHT EVERYDAY AGAINST THE UNFAIR, 2019 Charcoal on newsprint 102 × 72cm

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MACHINE TO HEAR NOISE LIKE MUSIC, 2019 Charcoal on newsprint 102 × 72cm

MACHINE TO TURN WIND INTO LAUGHTER, 2019 Charcoal on newsprint 102 × 72cm

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GIRAFA: NO FINAL O PESCOZSO QUEBRA — GIRAFFE: IN THE END THE NECK BREAKES, 2019 Digital video Duration 5 min 12 sec

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GIRAFA: NO FINAL O PESCOZSO QUEBRA — GIRAFFE: IN THE END THE NECK BREAKES, 2019 Digital video, stool (pencil crayon on wood), 15 × 30 × 19cm Detail (above) and installation view (right) with WHITENESS ETHNOGRAPHY and ‘machine drawings’

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WHITENESS ETHNOGRAPHY [1-18], 2019 Efun on inkjet prints Various sizes

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WHITENESS ETHNOGRAPHY [family], 2019 Efun on inkjet prints Diptych, 60 × 80cm each

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CAMBURÃO ARCHIVE [1-11], 2019 Acrylic on canvas 28 × 35cm each

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FOR ADULT USE ONLY, 2019 Inkjet prints Quadriptych, 69.5 × 105cm, 69.5 × 47cm, 69.5 × 47cm, 69.5 × 47cm

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IROKO TO SANTA MARIA, 2019 Inkjet prints Triptych, 60 × 80cm each

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IMAGES THAT ARE ALREADY IN THE WORLD [ABOUT SOUTH AFRICAN COLONIALISM], 2019 Pencil on newsprint 32 × 22cm

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I AM THE WAY..., 2019 Acrylic on cardboard boxes 27 × 35 × 28cm; plinth 36.5 × 100 × 70cm

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YES THERE IS – NO THERE IS NOT, 2019 Acrylic on cardboard Diptych, 50.5 × 70.5cm each

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Vá em direção aos

Sisipho

presuntos de agosto

Ngodwana

-------------------

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PROJETO: _respira profundamente _alongar toda a coluna _relaxar todo o corpo _deixar que o corpo caminhe sem pressa _ escolher/ eleger um ponto qualquer do globo. país, região, cidade com grande contingente de migrantes _ eleger outro ponto de grande êxodo [migrantes/ emigrantes] _caminhar em direção ao ponto de migração _caminhar em sentido contrário ao fluxo migratório

O que isso significa? Para responder a essa pergunta corretamente, teremos que fazer movimentos de ida e volta entre tempos, analogias e percepções. Por uma questão de linguagem, começaremos pelo meio – esta é a história de uma pedra.

LINE HAIR [Fio de cabelo], 2019 Objetos encontrados (pedra, cabelo sintético) 35 × 95 × 75cm

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Vá em direção aos presuntos de agosto

O meio –

LINE HAIR [Fio de cabelo] foi produzido com objetos encontrados:

Em 1488, os portugueses embarcaram numa expedição rumo

uma grande pedra e cabelos sintéticos. Na pedra, há três desenhos-

ao sul da África para explorar possíveis rotas comerciais entre

contornos da África, Ásia e América do Sul. A composição foi

a Europa e a Ásia. Devido a condições climáticas traiçoeiras e

produzida no Breaking Bread, um espaço independente em Rugby,

imprevisíveis, alcançar ou sobreviver a circum-navegação do

na Cidade do Cabo, na África do Sul, que oferece residências

continente não era um feito fácil. Por esse motivo, os portugueses

artísticas. Foi aqui que Paulo Nazareth viveu por três meses, de

resolveram chamar a sua entrada para a África Meridional de

dezembro de 2018 a fevereiro de 2019, com a mãe, Mama Ana, a

Cabo das Tormentas. Nazareth vê a história dessas conquistas

sua companheira Luciana, e seus dois filhos, Gabriel e Maria.

coloniais, da Europa até a Ásia, como algo interrompido por uma

No segundo mês da sua estadia, uma colega e eu fomos

“grande pedra” no caminho. Essa pedra era a África.

convidadas a visitar o seu ateliê, “uma exposição em casa”, como

Após diversas campanhas de saque e pilhagem, a África do

disse o artista brincando. Ao chegarmos, Nazareth fez um passeio

Sul se tornou um importante portal de mineração para os países

com a gente pela casa que abrigava a exposição, que começava

europeus, em especial, Portugal, Holanda e, depois, a Inglaterra.

logo na porta da frente e terminava no último quarto, localizado

Como resultado, o nome mudou de Cabo das Tormentas para

na extremidade oposta. Mais tarde, ele chamou a exposição de

Cabo da Boa Esperança, refletindo a ideia de rota oportuna

ENKOSI, UMOYA WABUYA [Obrigado, o espírito retornou]. Quando

e lucrativa a serviço da Europa e da sua meta de expansão

caminhávamos de volta para a porta, ele parou para falar sobre o

econômica global. Hoje, aquilo que conhecemos como Cabo da

novo trabalho. LINE HAIR foi a sua introdução.

Boa Esperança é uma península composta quase inteiramente

No início, a visão da grande pedra colocada em cima do cabelo reciclado me provocou estranhamento. A primeira pergunta

de montanhas rochosas que circulam o ponto que fica mais a sudoeste do continente africano.

que me veio à cabeça foi a razão de ele ter decidido usar esses materiais. Sua resposta foi: “Bem, no Brasil, cabelo é memória

O que isso significa?

e muitos negros cortam ou alisam o cabelo como resultado de atitudes racistas em relação à negritude e à beleza”. “Se esse é o

Nazareth faz questão de não raspar o seu cabelo, algo que ele

caso”, eu continuei, “por que você colocou uma pedra em cima do

vê como um ato de resistência, que se torna ainda mais potente

cabelo?”. “Porque pedra também é memória”, ele concluiu.

quando lhe perguntam com educação o motivo da sua recusa. Foi à luz disso que, em 2016, durante a sua segunda visita à África do Sul, ele produziu Pencil Test – for me stay here [Teste do lápis – pra mim fique aqui], um trabalho de performance e vídeo que questiona os efeitos perduráveis da Lei de Registro Populacional Sul-Africana de 1950. O vídeo, filmado por Nazareth com uma câmera portátil, mostra transeuntes perplexos, mas entretidos com o ato de colocar um lápis no cabelo de um estranho.

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Sisipho Ngodwana

Sob o regime do apartheid, o “teste do lápis” era um método

E o que quer dizer carregar essa “grande pedra”?

de avaliar o grupo racial ao qual pertencia uma pessoa, por meio da inserção de um lápis no seu cabelo. Se o lápis caísse,

A mudança temporária de Nazareth para a Cidade do Cabo foi

a pessoa era considerada branca. Se o lápis não caísse, era

motivada pela sua forte vocação pessoal de pesquisador de rotas

considerada uma pessoa de cor. O sistema foi concebido como

escravistas – traçando o movimento de escravos desde o começo

uma resposta às irregularidades que apareceram com a Lei de

da colonização. Sua missão é trazer vida para as pessoas, os

Registro Populacional. Como a lei exigia que todos os cidadãos do

lugares e as humanidades que foram apagados nesse processo.

país fossem classificados de acordo com as suas “características

Vivendo em Palmital, ele começou a visitar países colonizados

raciais”, ambiguidades ao redor do tom da pele eram frequentes,

pelos portugueses ou nos quais os portugueses mantiveram

resultando em mensagens conflitantes segundo as estruturas

relações comerciais, incluindo o tráfico de escravos. Seu ponto de

estabelecidas. Quando essas fricções se tornaram generalizadas,

partida foi seu local de nascimento, Porto da Figueira, uma vila no

o “teste do cabelo” virou a nova taxonomia, na qual o cabelo se

Vale do Watu [Vale dos grandes rios ou das grandes águas]. Esse

tornou o tema de um pandemônio político.

foi o nome que a região recebeu dos Krenak, a população que

Em LINE HAIR, o cabelo é, portanto, um vestígio catalítico da opressão, da cultura e do espaço. A pedra é um fragmento

habitava essa parte de Minas Gerais antes da ocupação colonial. Hoje, o vale se chama Rio Doce.

de terras desmembradas, corpos deslocados e ancestralidades

Em 1937, a região foi batizada de Governador Valadares, em

esquecidas. Para Nazareth, a “grande pedra” é tanto um fardo

homenagem a Benedito Valadares, o governador da época. Sobre

pesado quanto um totem do nosso passado e presente. Sendo o

o lugar onde nasceu, Nazareth diz:

peso da pedra físico e também psicológico, “é nela que podemos realmente encontrar a razão para nos libertar”, ele explica,

Porto da Figueira era um posto militar no Vale do Rio Doce

porque a “grande pedra” continua nas nossas psiques, histórias

em terras pertencentes ao povo Borum e aos quilombolas.

e memórias, quer queiramos quer não.

A partir dali, os invasores brancos, europeus de origem

Quando perguntei a Nazareth sobre os danos somáticos

alemã e italiana, além de portugueses, iniciaram sua guerra

e psíquicos que o carregar da pedra causa no corpo imediato,

suja contra índios e quilombolas e colonizaram essas

sua resposta foi: “Se alguém está cansado de carregar a pedra,

terras. Eu nasci em Morro do Carapina,1 quando a cidade

ela pode ser colocada no chão e servir como um assento para

já se chamava Governador Valadares, em homenagem ao

descansar; também podemos pedir que outra pessoa nos ajude

homem que foi nomeado como governador do estado de

a carregá-la”.

Minas Gerais pelo, então, ditador Getúlio Vargas. O que eu faço é confirmar o nome anterior, recusando o termo aristocrático Valadarense, que se refere ao interventor. Meu trabalho é nominar de novo, devolver sentidos anteriores... Sou Nazareth do Vale do Watu, herdeiro do povo Borum.

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Vá em direção aos presuntos de agosto

Desde o começo de sua jornada, ele já passou por estados

dúvida, me voltei para a sua amiga em busca de confirmação.

vizinhos, países da América do Sul, América do Norte, África e

“Por causa do trânsito, pode ser melhor pegar o metrô”, ela

Ásia. Sua prática, que se firmou na África e na diáspora africana, é

concordou. Respondi com um “OK” repleto de dúvida. Duas

guiada por africanos, afro-americanos, nativos americanos, afro-

horas e meia depois, ainda estávamos caminhando – e, é claro,

brasileiros e indígenas. Nazareth adaptou e desenvolveu a prática

já tínhamos perdido a vernissage. Naquele momento, eu me

do flâneur, transformando-a na prática do trecheiro, termo que

dei conta de que a percepção de tempo e espaço de Nazareth

define “aquele que caminha longas distâncias a pé”.

era completamente diferente da percepção do resto de nós. Foi

Nazareth explica:

também nesse dia que eu perguntei ao artista porque ele sempre caminhava para os lugares aonde ia. Sua resposta foi de uma

Trecheiro vem de trecho. Trecheiro ou trechero é

simplicidade extraordinária:

aquele que está no trecho, aquele que caminha o trecho... mas não é um termo amplamente usado fora

“Porque eu quero sentir a terra no pé.”

dessa “comunidade”, é um termo interno... O trecheiro caminha longas distâncias, cruza um país de dimensões

“Mas por quê, Paulo?”

continentais... O trecheiro não tem motivo para estar no trecho e para caminhar, o trecheiro vive no trecho,

“Porque é importante para mim sentir a terra e eu quero

vive na estrada... alguns estão caminhando há um ano,

encontrar pessoas no caminho e passar tempo com elas”.

outros caminham a vida toda, algo como 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 anos ou mais... alguns morrem no trecho, outros nascem

“Mas por quê, Paulo?”

no trecho... a maioria dos trecheiros são homens, mas também há mulheres no trecho... é uma vida dura, cheia

“Porque há muita confusão nas comunidades negras na

de privações, mas também é uma vida de liberdade, na

América Latina.”

qual os indivíduos não estão sujeitos às leis do mercado... é um estilo de vida. E embora uma única pessoa possa

Para Nazareth, o ato de caminhar se tornou uma questão de

conseguir carregar o peso de uma grande pedra, o

memória. Por meio de uma relação direta com o chão mutável

trecheiro carrega o peso de um mundo que é ao mesmo

debaixo dos seus pés, caminhar se tornou um veículo para

tempo apagado e recordado.

revelar a memória do seu país natal, no qual a imposição do esquecimento passa quase despercebida na composição social

Minha primeira experiência de caminhar com Nazareth foi no Brasil. Encontramo-nos no saguão de um hotel a caminho de um evento. “Pegamos um Uber?”, eu perguntei. “Não, é muito perto, podemos pegar o trem e andar de lá”, ele disse. Um pouco em

156

do dia a dia brasileiro.

Sisipho Ngodwana

Em maio de 2015, o Brasil implementou o Acordo Ortográfico

existência e, talvez, desacelera a velocidade da sua extinção.

da Língua Portuguesa, um projeto idealizado, originalmente,

É nesse contexto que a língua se torna uma ferramenta

em 1911. O mandato da lei é criar uma ortografia única da língua

essencial para construir e articular a realidade. Ao usar uma

portuguesa entre Portugal e suas colônias. Além do Brasil,

língua, usamos um conjunto já estabelecido de lentes históricas e

incluem-se Angola, Cabo Verde, Moçambique, Macau, Guiné-

culturais através das quais a realidade é percebida, tanto interna

Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, Guiné Equatorial e Timor Leste.

quanto externamente. Nazareth, que hoje consegue se comunicar

Seu objetivo é padronizar a forma escrita da língua, criando,

em sete idiomas, incluindo suaíli, isiXhosa e inglês, faz sempre

essencialmente, uma língua portuguesa homogênea, com base na

questão de aprender o idioma mais falado nas cidades que ele

forma como é falada e escrita na Europa.

visita, pois a comunicação é a base da interação. Um dos projetos

Mas a língua não obedece. É certo que ela é, em si, um

planejados para a sua visita à África do Sul foi aprender inglês.

fabricador de status quo, tanto que, mesmo quando criamos

Quando lhe perguntam por que ele escolheu aprender inglês na

novas terminologias, elas nunca vão além daquilo que a língua

África do Sul, em vez de no Reino Unido ou nos Estados Unidos,

está preparada a conceder. Entretanto, a língua se recusa a

sua resposta alude ao fato de que sistemas linguísticos não estão

permanecer estática; ela é muito mais do que o som emitido

apenas alinhados à cultura, mas também refletem o país e seus

quando falada, ou do que gestos na língua de sinais. A história e a

hábitos sociais. Ele destaca que a “língua é fundamental para

língua são tão simbióticas que se tornam sinonímias, dependendo

entender as pessoas e as suas culturas. Se você não consegue

uma da outra para a sua autopreservação.

falar a língua de um povo, como pode dizer que o conhece?”.

Na África do Sul, o ordenamento da língua está intimamente ligado à pedagogia pós-colonial. A situação histórica do país, com

E quais interações serão possíveis se a base da formação dessas relações é ignorada por completo?

a sua profusão de culturas, ambientes jurídicos e sociopolíticos,

Contudo, quando Nazareth aprende uma nova língua,

bem como sua memória, não apenas dita os parâmetros

o resultado é sempre uma versão “manca” do idioma falado,

segundo os quais as reformas são implementadas, mas também

pois ele mistura e ignora palavras e regras gramaticais que as

determina até que ponto essas mudanças são materializadas e

pessoas normalmente acham essenciais. A pergunta inevitável é:

a quem beneficiam. Neville Alexander, um pensador sul-africano

será sua intenção desenvolver uma habilidade de se comunicar

que estuda a política da linguagem, defende que um sistema

de forma ampla ou, talvez, reverter as ramificações da imposição

de ordenamento da língua não é algo simples, pois mesmo

linguística por meio da debilitação da língua, da rejeição de

quando se cria a impressão de transformação, a discriminação

instituições culturais de longa data e da pressão para que os

sistêmica não muda, pois a própria linguagem é usada para

últimos 600 anos de história sucumbam à transformação?

manter desigualdades culturais, socioeconômicas, políticas e ambientais.2 Dessa forma, quando o Brasil apaga legalmente as culturas indígenas a favor do aparato colonial e dos ganhos financeiros, o trecheiro se torna aquele que documenta a sua

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Vá em direção aos presuntos de agosto

Após o meio —

Podemos sugerir que a travessia de fronteiras a pé evoca

voltou para a África em uma época em que o continente estava

as jornadas de Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, um indivíduo

sob estado de sítio”. Por isso, Nazareth caminha também,

reverenciado por Nazareth. Baquaqua foi abduzido de uma

tentando revelar essas histórias “subterrâneas” e, em essência,

região que era conhecida como Zoogoo (que, hoje em dia, é a

completar o caminho circular que ele acredita ter sido feito por

cidade de Djougou, na região noroeste do Benim). Assim como

Baquaqua. Às vezes, ele segue ondas direcionais da América do

quatro milhões de africanos, ele foi enviado para o Brasil para

Sul para a África. Outras vezes, ele se move contra o fluxo, indo

ser escravizado. Ele escreveu uma autobiografia intitulada An

da América do Sul para a América do Norte, passando novamente

Interesting Narrative: Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua

pela América do Sul para chegar à África, a caminho da Ásia, e

(1854),3 baseada em sua vida antes, durante e depois da

mais uma vez percorre a África em seu caminho de volta para a

escravidão. De acordo com seu relato, ele primeiro trabalhou para

América do Sul. Espelhando as correntes oceânicas, a migração

um padeiro em Pernambuco e depois foi transferido para o navio

não é limitada a um movimento feito em uma única direção.

de um capitão no Rio de Janeiro. Em 1847, navegou para a cidade

Assim como a percepção de tempo de Nazareth, suas jornadas

de Nova York e conseguiu escapar, passando pelo menos dois

não são lineares e, portanto, seus relatos históricos muitas vezes

anos em Porto Príncipe, no Haiti.

se utilizam de tempos contemporâneos apenas para retificar

A principal rota de fuga de Baquaqua foi a rede secreta

o que era velho.

conhecida como Underground Railroad [Ferrovia Secreta], uma operação clandestina contra a escravização de pessoas negras

_respira profundamente

em todo o continente americano. A rede era composta de rotas

_alongar toda a coluna

secretas, pontos de encontro e casa seguras que ajudavam os

_relaxar todo o corpo

escravizados a viajarem do sul dos Estados Unidos para o norte, e também para países vizinhos, onde a escravidão já havia sido

_deixar que o corpo caminhe sem pressa

abolida. Entre esses países estavam México, Haiti e Canadá, além

_ escolher/ eleger um ponto qualquer do globo. país, região,

de outros. Em sua biografia, Baquaqua conta que passou de três a

cidade com grande contingente de migrantes

quatro anos entre esses países, antes de se estabelecer no Reino

_ eleger outro ponto de grande êxodo [migrantes/ emigrantes]

Unido, sem nunca desistir de encontrar o caminho de volta para

_caminhar em direção ao ponto de migração

a sua terra natal no Benim. Até mesmo durante seus estudos no

_caminhar em sentido contrário ao fluxo migratório

New York Central College, de 1850 a 1853, ele tentou persuadir as autoridades nova-iorquinas a permitirem que ele voltasse para o Benim como missionário. Ele foi visto e ouvido pela última vez no Reino Unido. Nazareth aponta que “não importa se falso ou verdadeiro, acreditamos que ele voltou para casa, mas sabemos que ele

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Sisipho Ngodwana

Dando seguimento a ENKOSI, UMOYA WABUYA, Nazareth

não existia no dia anterior. Ele teve tanto medo e pavor

apresentou PHAMBI KWENDLOVU [Antes do elefante], sua

da nova vida que voltou para trás e desapareceu. E as

primeira exposição individual na Stevenson Gallery, em 2019. Na

pessoas foram salvas.

época da abertura, ele declarou: “Nada nunca é o mesmo, mas nada nunca passa”. Ao mesmo tempo que a mostra reconfigura

Nazareth usa materiais fotográficos que ele coleta desde 2006,

o tempo como espiral, explora a relação complexa entre a África,

quando fez uma residência na Índia, sua primeira viagem para

a Ásia e as Américas, por meio de trabalhos como WHITENESS

fora do Brasil. Seu voo entre Minas Gerais e Nova Délhi fez escala

ETHNOGRAPHY [Etnografia da branquitude] [p. 106-113]. Nessa

em Johannesburgo. Por coincidência, a rota de voo foi em forma

série, Nazareth usa imagens “encontradas” em arquivos

de semicírculo, estabelecendo a fórmula que Nazareth adotaria

históricos na internet que ele coleciona. Ele fotografa essas

como a base fundamental do seu envolvimento com o mundo e

imagens da tela do seu laptop com a sua câmera “especial”, cuja

com a feitura de sua arte. Hoje, essa fórmula leva em consideração

lente está coberta por um pedaço de garrafa de cerveja de vidro

a rota de Baquaqua e acontece em um trajeto reverso ao fluxo

marrom. Essas imagens são depois reimpressas e ele desenha

migratório imposto pelo tráfico de escravizados no Atlântico.

nelas círculos brancos com efun. Em relação a essa série, ele conta uma lenda iorubá:

Ao pesquisar a história do movimento, da migração e da escravidão em livros e na internet, Nazareth encontrou uma recorrência de materiais etnográficos coletados por europeus

159

Em um vilarejo em algum lugar da África Ocidental, havia

brancos sobre africanos e populações nativas das Américas

um louco, o Sr. Morto. As pessoas diziam que o Sr. Morto

e da Ásia. Esses materiais existem, na sua maioria, na forma

era muito louco. Ele matava todo mundo, jovens, velhos,

de fotografias em branco e preto, cujo objetivo era criar

homens, mulheres, pessoas do bem, pessoas do mal; ele

uma etnologia das pessoas desses continentes. WHITENESS

simplesmente saía matando gente. Ele nunca pensava no

ETHNOGRAPHY usa essas fotografias como uma premissa para

que estava fazendo, ele só pensava em matar. Mas as

um estudo sobre a construção da branquitude e do nascimento

pessoas tinham muito medo do Sr. Morto e rezavam para

do projeto colonial. Nazareth identifica na fotografia etnográfica

pedir a ajuda de Oxalá. Oxalá chegou e disse: certo, vou

uma manifestação do mito da negritude. A prática dessa

pensar e encontrarei uma solução para isso. Oxalá então

pesquisa, definida como “um estudo detalhado de pessoas e de

pegou, com uma mão, uma galinha preta e, com a outra,

suas culturas no próprio ambiente por um pesquisador que é de

efun. Soprou o efun na galinha, fazendo uma tempestade

outra cultura ou país”, revela não a verdadeira história dos seus

de pó branco. O efun grudou na galinha e assim nasceu

sujeitos, mas as intenções e a psicologia da branquitude e do

a galinha d’angola. Quando o Sr. Morto apareceu para

predador colonial.

fazer o seu trabalho na manhã seguinte, viu a nova vida.

Nazareth, que vê a internet como um conglomerado de

Viu a galinha d’angola na rua e sentiu muito medo por

arquivos que uma pessoa pode usar sem ter contato direto com

causa da nova vida e ele não soube o que fazer, pois ela

as pessoas que eles representam, explica:

Vá em direção aos presuntos de agosto

Antes do meio —

Eu sei que alguém vai tirar uma foto dessas obras, que

Em 2013, Nazareth iniciou um projeto chamado The Red Inside

elas vão voltar para o círculo de Samsara, mas quando

[O vermelho dentro], no qual ele traça a rota da Ferrovia Secreta

elas voltam para a web, elas não são mais apenas uma

andando do Brasil até o Canadá, passando pelos Estados Unidos.

réplica etnográfica, pois têm a proteção de Oxalá.

Quando Nazareth não está caminhando, ele é acompanhado por um grupo de amigos e colegas que o ajudam a dirigir uma

No mesmo sentido, a história do vilarejo sem nome não termina

caminhonete Ford na qual ele leva melancias. Algumas dessas

com o Sr. Morto, o predador colonial, ela termina com as pessoas

melancias são de verdade, outras são réplicas feitas de cimento

e a mão de Oxalá.

ou argila que Nazareth coleta do Rio Mississippi. Sua abordagem conceitual faz referência ao sistema de produção industrial em massa, conhecido como Fordismo, ao mesmo tempo que evoca a importância histórica e cultural do Rio Mississippi e do sul dos Estados Unidos. No caminho, Nazareth planta sementes de melancia – uma referência aos escravizados que faziam isso ao longo das suas jornadas, não apenas para marcar a rota de escape, mas também para o sustento. Aqueles em busca da liberdade chamavam essas frutas de “presuntos de agosto”. A frase “vá em direção aos presuntos de agosto” apontava para a rota rumo a Betty Town, na região de Beaufort, na Carolina do Norte, que era conhecida pela sua grande população de negros libertos. Foi por causa disso que as melancias passaram a ser vistas como símbolos de autoemancipação. No entanto, elas também aparecem em caricaturas racistas que representam afro-americanos mostrando um carinho exagerado pela fruta. Imagens de Barack Obama comendo melancia fizeram parte dos protestos contra a sua reeleição em 2012. O símbolo é mais do que irônico. A fruta é originária da África e, quando a escravidão foi abolida nos Estados Unidos, a melancia se tornou uma das principais mercadorias vendidas por comerciantes negros. A série fotográfica On the Rivers of the River [Nos rios do rio] [p. 78-81] faz parte do projeto The Red Inside. Cada foto mostra Nazareth com um ou dois participantes em pé em frente a um painel

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Sisipho Ngodwana

do projeto de murais chamado Vicksburg Riverfront, instalado no

ocultados na nossa consciência coletiva. Esses trabalhos

muro de proteção contra inundações no Rio Mississippi. Antes da

imaginam uma representação da era pós-revolução industrial.

colonização europeia, o local era o lar de uma população de nativos

Os pássaros de Nazareth podem ser interpretados como

americanos chamada Natchez, que perdeu formalmente seu local

humanos, presos no ecossistema mecânico e reprodutivo e

de habitação em 1729 para os colonos franceses. Em 4 de julho

em superestruturas sociais. Esses desenhos nos convidam a

de 1863, com a guerra civil chegando ao fim, a União conseguiu

reexaminar os edifícios sutis que escondem as ramificações

sitiar Vicksburg, o último porto militar dos Estados Confederados.

cíclicas do desejo secular de escravidão.

O cerco resultou na abolição da escravatura com a promulgação da 13ª Emenda, e os Estados Unidos foram declarados um país livre da escravidão em 1865, no mesmo ano em que o presidente Abraham Lincoln foi assassinado. Os murais são cenas da era da Reconstrução e mostram, em sua maioria, eventos romantizados que representam o crescimento agrícola e econômico ocorrido com o fim da guerra. No entanto, esse também foi um período que testemunhou o aumento da violência racista contra a recém-liberta população negra. A emancipação dos negros era vista como a razão para a pobreza e a perda de status da população branca. Muitos confrontos resultaram em violência e tiroteios, por exemplo, quando um negro se recusava a tirar o chapéu ou baixar a cabeça para o seu antigo senhor. Nazareth destaca que, mesmo com a declaração da emancipação dos negros, a cultura de violência sobre a qual se construiu a nação dos Estados Unidos foi mantida em todos os seus aspectos na sociedade americana – inclusive na adoção da 13ª Emenda. O projeto The Red Inside pode ser entendido como um mapa subterrâneo ou “underground” das Américas e do mundo ao seu redor, no qual a autoemancipação está sempre sob negociação e ameaça. Exibida ao lado de On the Rivers of the River, PHAMBI KWENDLOVU é uma série de “desenhos por máquina” [p. 97-101], que traz à tona esses sistemas que continuam

161

Vá em direção aos presuntos de agosto

Em 2006, na primeira vez que visitou o continente africano,

maiores safras domésticas do continente africano, é originário

Nazareth iniciou o seu projeto chamado Cadernos de África. O

da América Central. O trocadilho do título, que faz referência

projeto, que abarca vários suportes, inclui uma série de panfletos

às palavras em inglês MAIZE, que significa milho, e MAZE,

que formam uma coleção de guias das interações que Nazareth

que significa labirinto, sugere que a expansão do tráfico de

estabelece com as pessoas e coisas que ele encontra em suas

escravizados e o consequente crescimento econômico do Ocidente

jornadas pelo continente. Um dos elementos mais interessantes

são tanto uma conglomeração de movimentos e deslocamentos

dessas observações são noções de espaço e lugar, sistemas

quanto uma rede de caminhos quase impenetráveis e complexos,

geopolíticos e suas relações com os humanos e a natureza.

que exigem migração, muitas vezes involuntária. Na África do

Esses textos, em sua maioria em português, muitas vezes

Sul, somos lembrados dos ataques xenofóbicos que permeiam

incluem traduções simplistas que são claramente o resultado da

nossos espaços de convívio, onde a violência é encoberta de uma

creolização da língua inglesa via Google Translate.

forma sutil por uma história de racismo, pobreza e ressentimento, acompanhada de um contínuo deslocamento.

_ Olhar, marcar, reparar, registrar todas as ocorrências de danos ao mundo _ Olhar, marcar, reparar, registrar todas as vezes que um homem causa danos ao mundo _ Olhar, marcar, reparar, registrar todas as vezes que a terra é descoberta _ Olhar, marcar, reparar, registrar todas as vezes em que óleo é derramado na água _ Olhar, marcar, reparar, registrar todas as vezes em que a terra é cavada não para enterrar os mortos

Podemos deduzir também que ELEPHANT REMEMBER OR “LE SOUVENIR” é uma reflexão sobre a subjugação de animais e da natureza pelos seres humanos. Durante a nossa conversa no Breaking Bread, Nazareth falou das histórias dos elefantes em circos, mencionando o caso da notória “Mary Assassina”, uma fêmea de elefante que foi tirada do seu habitat natural na Ásia para ser utilizada em um circo no Tennessee, no Mississippi. Durante uma de suas apresentações no circo que se chamava Sparks World Famous Shows, Mary matou o seu treinador após ter sido cutucada atrás da orelha. Os espectadores condenaram Mary, clamando “Matem o elefante! Queremos matar o elefante”.

O resultado dessa investigação foi a exposição ENKOSI, UMOYA

No dia seguinte, Mary foi linchada usando um guindaste industrial

WABUYA que, em sua primeira edição, foi realizada em casa. Ao

móvel em frente a uma multidão de 2.500 espectadores.

lado de LINE HAIR, víamos trabalhos como ELEPHANT REMEMBER

A exposição de Nazareth PHAMBI KWENDLOVU evoca a

OR “LE SOUVENIR” [Elefante lembra ou “le souvenir”] [p. 38-39]

importância do elefante como vestígio físico e metáfora da nossa

e A MAZE [Um labirinto] [p. 41], nos quais objetos são sujeitados

memória. Ele diz:

ao peso da pedra e do tijolo. Em A MAZE, um tijolo é colocado em cima de uma espiga de milho posta diretamente no chão. Em

Sabemos que elefantes não esquecem. Vemos nossa

um primeiro momento, presume-se que o trabalho faz referência

história por meio deles e eles nos ajudam a lembrar,

à domesticação do milho na África. O milho, que é hoje uma das

já que nós nos esquecemos.

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Sisipho Ngodwana

Ambas as exposições revelam essas histórias apagadas. Além

A história de Baartman não é única. Quando adolescente,

disso, elas nos convidam a encarar a recusa generalizada e

Ota Benga foi comprado de traficantes de escravos em uma

perversa de reconhecer que o trabalho africano como mão de

região que na época, em 1903, era conhecida como Estado Livre

obra escravizada foi a força motriz do capitalismo industrial

do Congo, enquanto o país estava sob o controle do rei belga,

a partir dos primórdios do século XIV. PHAMBI KWENDLOVU e

Leopoldo II. Benga foi comprado para a Exposição Internacional

outras obras individuais, tais como ELEPHANT REMEMBER OR

de 1904 em St. Louis, no Mississippi, organizada para celebrar

“LE SOUVENIR” incentivam-nos a questionar: o que restaria da

o imperialismo americano. O fascínio ao redor de Benga se

potência do primeiro mundo se a força africana como mão de

explica pelos seus dentes afiadíssimos que eram o resultado

obra escravizada fosse removida da história?

da raspagem dos dentes, um costume cultural comum entre os

Na história recontada por Nazareth, ele traça paralelos entre

jovens congoleses. Embora a exposição tenha sido um sucesso em

o destino de Mary e de Saartjie Baartman, uma mulher da etnia

termos de publicidade,5 líderes religiosos negros reagiram contra

Khoikhoi, que foi retirada do Cabo Oriental e enviada para a

o tratamento e o racismo expostos no evento. Suas objeções

Inglaterra, onde foi exibida como sujeito de interesse macabro

iriam mais tarde galvanizar os protestos diários que resultaram

e peculiaridade sexual. Devido ao fascínio provocado pelo seu

no processo jurídico contra o zoológico em questão.6

corpo, principalmente suas genitais, o público inglês comprava

Em sua recusa inabalável de se exibir perante o público,

ingressos para vê-la ou tocá-la. Ela foi apresentada em “shows

Benga ameaçou e atacou visitantes e funcionários. No final,

de horrores” em Londres e Manchester, antes de ser vendida para

a sua atitude forçou o zoológico a libertá-lo sob a custódia

um treinador de animais em Paris. Entre Londres e Paris, ela foi

do reverendo afro-americano James Gordon, um dos líderes

estuprada e engravidada pelo treinador como um experimento

religiosos que encabeçaram os protestos. Gordon ofereceu

científico.4 A sua filha, chamada Okurra Reaux, faleceu aos 5 anos

abrigo a Benga no Howard Coloured Orphan Asylum, um orfanato

de idade. A causa da sua morte é desconhecida e sua história

mantido pela igreja para abrigar crianças e jovens negros. Em

é ainda hoje um mito histórico.

1910, Benga foi transferido para o Seminário de Lynchburg,

Baartman morreu em Paris em 1815. Após a sua morte, seu

devido à contínua intimidação da imprensa. No seminário, ele

corpo foi desmembrado e dissecado. Suas genitais, seu cérebro e

viveu com Mary Hayes Allen, com quem teve sete filhos. Seis

seu esqueleto foram preservados em jarras de vidro. Foi produzido

anos depois, aos 32 anos de idade, Benga se suicidou com um

um molde de gesso do seu corpo, que foi exibido em museus e

tiro no coração em Lynchburg, Virgínia.

universidades em toda a Europa. Em 2002, quase 200 anos após

Ao vincular as histórias de Baquaqua, Baartman, Benga

a sua morte, seus restos mortais foram retornados à África do

e Mary, que carregam o peso da construção do nosso mundo,

Sul, sob o pedido de Nelson Mandela e de uma comunidade de

Nazareth diz:

Khoikhois e Griquas. Na história de Baartman, em seu trabalho não recompensado, em sua suposta insolência e exploração invasiva e

É bom lembrar que o elefante é também uma metáfora da

ritualizada, vemos a operação do aparato colonial e da branquitude.

nossa memória histórica. Sabemos da morte do elefante,

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Vá em direção aos presuntos de agosto

mas também temos que estar cientes da morte de

Se eu fizer os desenhos, eles acabam em um museu ou

mulheres, homens e crianças. Eles usam o elefante para

em uma coleção privada. Nós veremos os mesmos rostos.

esconder tudo. O elefante é útil, mas temos que olhar para

Não será notícia velha porque não esqueceremos os

além do elefante, como na história. Às vezes, tudo o que

rostos das pessoas.

conhecemos a partir da história oficial é ficção, um jogo de força entre ela e a história oral. São incidentes como esses que mobilizaram Nazareth a criar a série de desenhos que ele intitulou IMAGES THAT ARE ALREADY IN THE WORLD [Imagens que já estão no mundo] [p. 54-59, 68-71, 122-123]. Além dessa série e de WHITENESS ETHNOGRAPHY, o uso de materiais encontrados é

ainda

explorado

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