Being a black woman artist: Rosana Paulino’s vision on past, present and future

Decolonial curatorships have started to gain ground in more traditional institutional Brazilian environments – what is your take on that? Which paths are we yet to go through?

RP: This type of curation is starting now, but it’s happening very late and partly by force, to tell you the truth. For a long time, Brazil has been criticized, both from the inside looking out and the outside looking in, for its curators who privilege just one vision of art. From the inside looking out: with the insertion of new agents in the art field. Producers who are black women, black men, women, LGBTQI people are starting to put pressure on the area. And from the outside looking in, from art fairs, international exhibitions, universities and others, who come to us questioning the lack of diversity and inclusion in Brazilian production. It is common, for example, for me to arrive at universities outside Brazil and to be questioned about where the productions by Afro-Brazilians are, about how many teachers there are in the Afro-Brazilian department, who the most representative artists are…and I know from people who have intense contact with art fairs and museums that it’s the same picture there. So, these demands around the country do exist, and have existed. These two factors caused Brazil to, very slowly, start to advance in accepting these productions and to consider decolonial curators who will take into account even indigenous art. But I must emphasize that this is very late in happening and it is a long way from happening in the whole country. It is easy to forget that São Paulo works kind of like a “bubble” in terms of certain issues, and this is one of those.

In your view, how important is the artistic circuit outside galleries and institutions, and how do you think it influences artistic practice?

RP: This circuit is very important because it tends to be more experimental, it is the circuit that puts pressure on and that questions more vehemently what is being established. It is a mistake to think that the conventional artistic circuit alone can handle all the demands of contemporary art. It’s often the opposite. Some artists, for fear of risking their positions of prestige, can be more restrained in what they create than those who exist at “the margin” of the official circuit, if we can speak in such terms. These productions tend to expand the list of issues addressed in art and to “contaminate”, in a very positive sense, more conservative spheres of artistic creation.

Do you have any black women artists to recommend?

RP: I generally don’t like to mention names because I always end up being unjust and forgetting someone, but without question we can name artists like Renata Felinto, Priscila Rezende, Michelle Mattiuzzi, Juliana dos Santos, Charlene Bicalho, Janaína Barros, Lidia Lisboa, Sonia Gomes, Aline Motta, Mariana de Matos, also known as Maré, Ana Lira and Kika Carvalho, amongst others. And those are the more well known, who have been in the fight the longest. There is a very good up and coming young generation who I want to get to know more, and who, I’m sure, in the not so distant future will also be mentioned here.