African perspectivism and artistic creation: struggle, thought and images in Abdias Nascimento

• Grant number: 19/22573-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: November 15, 2021
• End date: March 30, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Art Fundamentals and Criticism
• Principal Investigator: Gilberto Alexandre Sobrinho
• Grantee: Gilberto Alexandre Sobrinho
• Host Investigator: Robert Philip Stam
• Host Institution: Instituto de Artes (IA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: New York University, United States
• Associated research grant(s): 24/21310-2 - XXX Visible Evidence Conference, AR.EXT

Abstract

Abdias Nascimento is one of Brazil's leading names in pan-Africanism, understood as an international social movement for the defense of black peoples' issues. Pan-Africanism, from its origins to contemporary developments, has played a key role in political, social, economic, educational and artistic projects in the liberation of African peoples and the diaspora. It was during the self-exile in the United States that Abdias Nascimento established continuous intellectual and militant approximation with international pan-Africanists exponents. The interest of this research lies in investigating this route, focusing on the period in which he lived, worked and militated in the United States, also establishing connections with other places. This is a period of establishment of other axes in his work, in which the permanence with the concern to align politics and art is verified, but in differentiated keys, and here we highlight the approach with the radical black movements of Black Power and Black Arts Movement, in the North American context, and the pan-Africanism that had spread to African countries. All these had an impact on their production and, conversely, their presence and performance also influenced these movements. Thus, the study focuses on the analysis of the publication of O quilombismo: documentos de uma militância pan-africanista (1981, 2002 and 2019) in connection with its pictorial production, in which conceptually reflect and expand quilombismo as an aesthetic and political category for the study of symbolic productions approached by the bias of Afroperspectivism. (AU)