ALICERCE (FOUNDATION), 2023

In Foundation, a diptych in oils, the images portrayed as tattoos are Adinkras, a set of symbols originally from Ashanti ethnic group of the Akan people from West Africa, currently settled in countries like Ghana and Burkina Faso. Within the realm of language, this ancient technology, composed of over 500 ideograms, expresses the cultural complexity of the Akan people with its social norms, codes of conduct, philosophical ideas and religious role. The Adinkras featured in the artwork are known as Sankofa, which can mean "return and pick it up" or "come back and take it", considering the past as a fundamental prelude for the present and future.

Lélia Gonzalez, a prominent Black intellectual and political activist, who was one of the founders of Unified Black Movement (Movimento Negro Unificado) in the 1970s, denounces in her writings the treatment given to the Afro-diasporic population and their descendants in Brazilian lands. According to her, the exploration process that began in 1550 with the transatlantic slave trade didn’t end with the sanctioning of Áurea Law in 1888, but it perpetuated in an ongoing movement through ancient segregationist, hierarchical and ideological systems. The figure of Lélia Gonzalez, even after her death, is a fuel for Sankofa political movement, that is, the search for pleading affirmative actions and rescuing memories that put an end to our long history of racial marginalization.

In Foundation, the tattoos seek to activate the body as an accumulation and maintenance zone of a group symbolic library, in which visual codes can find ways to be transformed into tools of resistance.

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Alicerce (Foundation), 2023

Oil on Canvas Diptych 80 cm x 60 cm (each)