Continuing the cycle #1 of our ARTE+CARE program, we present this week a set of new engravings on paper by artist Ayrson Heráclito.
Each of the four engravings included in this series of multiples represents a leaf of paper (or “folium”) of a handwritten notebook on the history of slavery that the artist has been producing since the 90s. In them, the branding red-hot iron marks are engraved with the initials of some plantation owners. These insignia were used to stamp the sugar boxes transported alongside the trading expeditions and also to mark the body of the slaves, evoking the perverse way the black population was identified in the sugar cane fields.
The leaf of paper here, in addition to indicating a kind of inventory of the Brazilian colonial system, also points to a skin-related metaphor, revealing all the realism and drama that marked the Afro-Brazilian body during the process of enslavement in the country.
This series recalls Heráclito’s first researches on the Brazilian colonial enterprise and also evokes his remarkable action Transmutation of the Flesh, in which performers wore an outfit made of jerked beef and were marked with the same red-hot branding irons present in this series, alluding to the violence of the colonial period in Bahia – the jerked beef seen as a metaphor for a slave body that, albeit suffering so much violence, it is still resisting. In 2015, artist Marina Abramovic invited Heráclito to re-enact the action during her Terra Comunal exhibition, which took place at Sesc Pompeia, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Click here to download the PDF file, which brings the full series and also more information about the artist’s research and the ARTE+CARE program.
To see the series on our Artsy profile, click here.
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ARTE+CARE is a program to support our artists and to help people and organizations with relevant actions and projects in the fields of culture, health and primary care. Series of unpublished works at affordable prices (ranging from USD 250 to USD 900 each) were developed exclusively by our represented artists for the program, and each month, part of the sales will be donated to a different initiative.
For cycle #1, we chose to support Solar dos Abacaxis’ Emergency Collaborative Fund for Artists and Creators.
Next week we end cycle #1 bringing new works by artist Pedro Victor Brandão. Cycle #2 will start in June with a new group of artists and a new initiative assisted by the program, and so on.