STORIES AND EXPERIENCES ABOUT NÓS DE ARUANDA: ARTISTAS DE TERREIRO

Abstract

Nós de Aruanda: Artistas de Terreiro is a project of collective exhibition with
protagonism of artists from terreiros and collective curatorship, which happens in Belém do
Pará since 2013, made with the objective of bringing together artists from communities of the
traditional African peoples (terreiros de candomblé) in an exhibition with works originating
from the daily life of these communities and that reveal the poetic production of the black visual
artists of terreiros, to circulate information about artistic production with the protagonism of
these peoples, to contribute to the implementation of Law 10.639 / 03, and to encourage the
occupation of spaces of cultural equipment by the black people. The need to insert artists from
terreiros into the circuit of visual arts appeared at the end of 2011 as an 'insigth' during the
classes of the discipline "Poetic Afro-Amazonian" for the specialization course in 'Education for
ethnic-racial relations' offered by the Afro-Amazonian Studies Group - GEAAM / UFPA. It was
in these classes that we aimed to subsidize the teaching of Afro-Brazilian art and culture and
contribute to the implementation of Law 10.639 / 2003, that we perceive that most of the works that the history of art registers as "Afro-Brazilian art" are of Euro-descendent artists who are not
part of traditional communities of African matrices. So what we perceive is a biased view of
Afro-Brazilian traditional practices. produced by artists who only use the ethnic-racial theme to
use them in works without any involvement or deepening on ethnic-racial relations in the
Brazilian diaspora. It is a cut, a quilt stitched together with several pieces of reports of
experiences in the plural of artist interviews and other plots that recompose the memory of five
centuries of black presence in the Amazon, and five years of a project aimed at re-being black in
the visual arts in the State of Pará.