From the heart of wars to the poetics of plasticity: creation and engagement in artistic thinking in African contexts from the 1980s till nowadays

• Grant number: 22/05923-9
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• Start date: April 01, 2023
• End date: March 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts
• Principal Investigator: Denise Dias Barros
• Grantee: Denise Dias Barros
• Host Institution: Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades (EACH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Pesquisadores principais: Laura Moutinho da Silva ; Paulo Sérgio da Costa Neves
• Associated researchers: Abdoulayae Niang ; Aghi Bahi ; Divine Fuh ; Emi Koide ; Jane Aparecida Marques ; Lia Dias Laranjeira ; Mahfouz Ag Adnane ; Marina Berthet ; Marina Di Napoli Pastore ; Rosa Cavalcanti Ribas Vieira ; Sandro Jose Caje da Paixão
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/15403-5 - Visual arts, violence and intertwined stories: production and circulation of works and artists between Mozambique and South Africa (1980-1999), BP.PD; 23/09438-0 - Linguistic and cultural mediation: Arabic productions of arts in North African contexts, BP.TT; 23/08981-2 - Curartorship and artistic creation in non-Western spaces, working forms : CCA Lagos, RAW, Le 18, Inema Arts Center, BP.PD; + associated scholarships 23/07271-1 - Mapping Digital Art Systems in Portuguese-Speaking Africa, BP.MS; 23/07136-7 - Poethics of performance in feminine senegalese art works, BP.DR; 23/07150-0 - Healing expressions in visual poetics: creation and curatorship in contamporary Africa, BP.MS - associated scholarships

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the Arts in African contexts have emerged strongly in biennials, exhibits and Art fairs inside the globalized circuit. Which substrates and movements mobilize creation and the expressive forms of cultural identities in their ethical-aesthetic and poetic dynamics? This first question unfolds in two study axes in this project, raising concerns in different connections and resonances perspectives in Arts in its varietal languages, History, Anthropology and Communications. The first axis studies - describes and analyzes - the languages used in themes and creations (made by artists, curators and collective creation movements) in the contemporary, its relationship, bodies and imagination poetics. It focuses on creative itineraries in dialogue with collective modulations of history and with cultural practices connected with specific sociopolitical contexts. The second sees the space of Arts as catalysts of artistic thought and experimentation in the artistic practice in violent (related to gender, racism and/or ethnicity) and life-threatening situations. Wars, despotic administrations, dictatorships or terrorism trigger displacement, exile and collective suffering, and unrest both creation and curatorial and theoretical thought. A methodology that connects authorship, creations, contexts and transdisciplinary understanding is proposed, as a heuristic path for the investigation, anchored in bibliographical theoretical research with seminars, case studies, field research and dialogical interaction with artists, curators, historians and cultural activists. The systematic thinking is connected to a meticulous practice in differential building of data in order to weave relationships between artistic expressions as thinking of the aesthetics of plasticity. (AU)