EXPLORING BRAZIL THROUGH ART
Exhibition examining Northeast Brazil shakes it up at the Lyman Allyn Museum
At the end of August, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum took in its current show, “Bandits & Heroes, Poets & Saints: Popular Art of the Northeast of Brazil,” in the form of 21 wooden shipping crates delivered to its front doors.
Museum workers spent four days unloading the contents of the crates in what exhibition coordinator Jane LeGrow says was the “mother of all IKEA projects.” And now Lyman Allyn visitors can experience the exhibition that has been traveling around the country over the last four years.
Booked and organized through the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2014, “Bandits & Heroes, Poets & Saints: Popular Art of the Northeast of Brazil” showcases “popular art,” or, in simpler terms, the art of ordinary people. These art pieces seek to tell the story of how European, African, and indigenous cultural traditions have interacted over a period of more than 500 years in Brazil’s northeastern region.
“In comparison to the other contemporary shows that we have coming, it will be a nice juxtaposition to those,” LeGrow says. “And it’s appropriate for our region because there are significant Brazilian populations throughout Connecticut and Rhode Island.”
Upon entering, the visitor experiences a cacophony of sounds ranging from high-tempo drum beats to chants and celebrations. Combine all that with videos, poster boards and photographs reminiscent of a National Geographic magazine, and the exhibition turns into something of an interactive exploration. To make the plethora of information more easily digestible, however, the show is presented around various stations centered on three themes: the land and its people; expressions of faith; poetry, celebration and song.
Building on the concept of “popular art” are photographs of local artists who reside throughout the region situated around the exhibition rooms. Information on where these artists live and how they entered into their respective art forms are also displayed.
“It’s fascinating to learn about these artists who we would probably never have heard of otherwise,” LeGrow says. “These are all untrained artists, and these are people who learned their craft from family or all on their own. Their art represents the things that they care about — the land, the people and its untold heroes and the events.”
This is the museum’s second show from the NEH. Last year, the museum
held “For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights,” a show that explored how visual culture affected the fight for civil rights in the U.S throughout the 1960s.
As with that show, LeGrow says, “Popular Art of the Northeast of Brazil” seeks to explore themes related to images and how those images have come to spark resistance movements in relation to centuries of slavery and discrimination.
The image of a black folk-hero named Anastasia, an enslaved African princess bound to wear a muzzle of sorts, for example, is placed throughout the show in the form of paintings, puppets and statues.
“She is remembered as a princess who resisted her master's advances and was therefore forced to wear this sort of strange mask over her mouth as a form of punishment,” LeGrow says.
Her image, centuries later, came to act as the symbol of black resistance movements that occurred primarily throughout the 1960s in Brazil. Slavery there, as in the U.S., significantly shaped Brazil's history. It's estimated, in fact, that ten times the 500,000 Africans who were brought into the United States were forced into Brazil for slavery.
“It's interesting to see how elements from this show tie into our previous show about civil rights. And it's those iconic images that have informed the people on how they identified with themselves, and this is a good example of that,” LeGrow says.
It's these types of parallels that can bring further understanding onto other cultures that we may know very little about, LeGrow says.