There is a need in Brazil to intensify the conversation about curatorship in relation to its formation, consolidation, and definition. We lack a clear picture with regard to who are the people working in the field, information that is crucial for rethinking the Arts, its spaces and makers. We must come to an understanding of neutrality as a fallacy. Class, gender, and racial-ethnical identities inform the practice of curators and art-makers.

Such has been the motivation behind the mapping hereby presented. The initial goal has been to gather information about Black and Indigenous Brazilian curators. A subsequent goal is to investigate their contribution to the field of curatorship in the country. Since I began researching the topic in September 2019, I have been able to identify 76 Afro Brazilian curators and 20 Indigenous curators, the majority of whom are women working as independent curators based in the Southeastern region. The data aforementioned has been collected through social media channels, and the professionals themselves have provided information, perhaps motivated by the importance of such a survey.

Data collected through social media channels, with the active participation of the curators, as researched by Luciara Ribeiro. Collaborator and Designer: Projeto Afro, Guillermina Bustos, Jorge Sepúlveda T., Gabriela Diaz Velasco, and the team from the Trabajadores de Arte collective.

Data collected through social media channels, with the active participation of the curators, as researched by Luciara Ribeiro. Collaborator and Designer: Projeto Afro, Guillermina Bustos, Jorge Sepúlveda T., Gabriela Diaz Velasco, and the team from the Trabajadores de Arte collective.

Data collected through social media channels, with the active participation of the curators, as researched by Luciara Ribeiro. Collaborator and Designer: Projeto Afro, Guillermina Bustos, Jorge Sepúlveda T., Gabriela Diaz Velasco, and the team from the Trabajadores de Arte collective.

With the purpose of expanding the data collected, the project has been incorporated into the Rede de Pesquisa e Formação em Curadoria de Exposição (Research and Learning Network for Curatorship in the Arts). The network gathers the following agents: Grupo de Pesquisa em Teorias e Metodologias em Curadoria de Exposições (Research Group for Theories and Methodologies for Curating Exhibitions), coordinated by Professors Carolina Ruoso, PhD; Joana D’Arc de Sousa Lima, PhD; Rita Lages Rodrigues, PhD; Janaína Barros, PhD; Marcelina Almeida, PhD; Saulo Moreno, MA; Luciara Ribeiro, MA; and Cristiane Mabel Medeiros, who currently serves as the director of the MAMAM/PE. Additional members of the network are the Laboratório de Curadoria de Exposições Bisi Silva; Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais’s Escola de Belas Artes; Núcleo de Pesquisa do Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães (MAMAM/Recife); Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira’s Laboratório de Arte-educação, curadorias e histórias das exposições; the cultural section Caderno Vida & Arte from the paper Jornal O Povo; and the Universidade Estadual de Minas Gerais’s Escola de Design.

The network’s goal is to critically investigate the field of contemporary curatorial practices, seen as one of the actors responsible for building and redefining histories for the Arts. Since 2018 it has conducted a survey of both Brazilian and international curators whose professional trajectories help understand the history of curatorship in Brazil. The network has also launched a survey form specifically targeting Brazilian curators, a tool for understanding the curatorial practices currently in place locally.

Only 28 curators had completed the survey as of May 2020, none of whom were Black or Indigenous. In face of such absence, the network compiled an additional list of curators. Nonetheless, invisibility persisted: of the 150 curators identified, only two were Black.

These numbers revealed to the network two crucial factors. The first, the ever-present systemic racism reflected in the Arts. The second, major Arts institutions have not recognized and incorporated these professionals into their staff. Such dire landscape brought the network to the realization of the importance of studying the difficulties faced by Black and Indigenous curators. It was in that context that my project became part of the network.

Despite its preliminary stages, the mapping I have conducted helps understand the dynamics in place and the struggles of these professionals.

Data collected through social media channels, with the active participation of the curators, as researched by Luciara Ribeiro. Collaborator and Designer: Projeto Afro, Guillermina Bustos, Jorge Sepúlveda T., Gabriela Diaz Velasco, and the team from the Trabajadores de Arte collective.

The numbers reveal that only 20% of the Indigenous curators in Brazil are employed by an Arts institution, in comparison to the majority 80% who are forced to work independently. Other factors such as lack of financial sufficiency from institutions and work relations biased to favor personal relations influence the absence revealed by the numbers. Having a career independent from major Arts organizations is not always the desired path due to financial instability, precarious and frayed work environments, and lack of public policies to support professionals who have gone independent.

Data collected through social media channels, with the active participation of the curators, as researched by Luciara Ribeiro. Collaborator and Designer: Projeto Afro, Guillermina Bustos, Jorge Sepúlveda T., Gabriela Diaz Velasco, and the team from the Trabajadores de Arte collective.

We have witnessed an increase in exhibitions and projects carried out by institutions from the Arts whose purpose is to promote greater racial, gender, and class “diversity” in their staff. The numbers aforementioned reveal that these actions have been insufficient to impact the foundation and to bring true change for Black and Indigenous curators in hiring policies – albeit their good intentions. Institutions from the Arts which have as a value the fight against racism must have an impact beyond the theme of their exhibitions and programs; they must show a commitment to hiring Black and indigenous curators who can then have their work acknowledged and fairly compensated financially. I stress yet again that an organization – including its white curators, directors, and managers – that remains silent and chooses to build white-only teams, is in firm agreement with the perpetuity of racism.

Data collected through social media channels, with the active participation of the curators, as researched by Luciara Ribeiro. Collaborator and Designer: Projeto Afro, Guillermina Bustos, Jorge Sepúlveda T., Gabriela Diaz Velasco, and the team from the Trabajadores de Arte collective.

It took 41 years for the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) to hire its first Black curator. In 2018, Horrana de Kássia Santoz and Amanda Carneiro became the first Black curators to join MASP’s staff. For Indigenous people, the gap would only be filled one year later, when Sandra Benites joined the team. Such a long interval illustrates the career struggles faced by Black and Indigenous curators in Brazil.

When analyzing so-called diversity policies in cultural institutions, one notices an additional limitation. Black and Indigenous curators have been boxed into the so-called “minority” label, thereby being seen by these organizations as spokespeople for a collective struggle that all of society should have been engaged with. When these institutions place upon a person of color the responsibility to always speak on one’s racial identity or to develop curatorial projects centering their race, they subject people to racial essentialism. Such practice reflects an insistence on controlling the desired roles for Black and Indigenous people, therefore negating their subjectivity, individuality, and needs.

Neutrality in curatorship is a fallacy. One cannot write other histories of the Arts in Brazil through white authorship. To continuously investigate Black and indigenous curatorial perspectives is to collaborate with the writing of other histories. The mapping I have conducted expresses a wish to understand them beyond the trope of representation, capturing their artistic and subjective processes. Data shown by the survey evince intentionality behind the invisibility – the exclusion of certain bodies and voices is integral to the field itself. My research has highlighted curatorial practices from lesser known regions of the country, such as the North, Northeastern and Central-West, which serves to prove that invisibility is not natural, but rather produced. The Arts have erased and excluded Black and Indigenous people.

V. 1_1 – OCTOBER 2020 BLACK AND INDIGENOUS CURATORS IN BRAZIL / Graphic 1 BLACK CURATORS, AFFILIATION, WORKING INDEPENDENTLY / AFFILIATED TO AN INSTITUTION, INDIGENOUS CURATORS, AFFILIATION, WORKING INDEPENDENTLY / AFFILIATED TO AN INSTITUTION. Graphic 2 BLACK CURATORS SORTED BY REGIONS, INDIGENOUS CURATORS SORTED BY REGIONS. Graphic 3 BLACK CURATORS SORTED BY GENDER, WOMEN / MEN / NON-BINARY, INDIGENOUS CURATORS SORTED BY GENDER, WOMEN / MEN. Text 1 bottom right side:
Information collected is frequently updated by the community VADB. If you wish to share your information, as well as of people working in the Arts in Latin America, please subscribe to http://tiny.cc/unetealacomunidadVADB. Text 2: Data collected through social media channels, with the active participation of the curators, as researched by Luciara Ribeiro. Collaborator and Designer: Projeto Afro, Guillermina Bustos, Jorge Sepúlveda T., Gabriela Diaz Velasco, and the team from the Trabajadores de Arte collective.

Our next step is to analyze data collected and merge it with the information gathered by the Rede de Pesquisa e Formação em Curadoria, a network about which I spoke at length in this article. Comparing databases would help us understand similarities and differences between these professionals. The decision to integrate my research into the initiatives Project Afro and the Trabajadores de Arte collective has been guided by the desire to write a new story for Black and Indigenous curators working in Brazil. I chose to partner with Project Afro because of its dedication to fostering a permanent space for sharing and studying Afro Brazilian art and Black authorship. As for Trabajadores de Arte, it represents my understanding of the urgent need to discuss hiring policies in the Arts, including selection processes that should value ethics, transparency, and a commitment to dismantling structural inequalities.

Here at Project Afro we have launched a section dedicated to spotlighting curators through interviews. The work by curator Raphael Fonseca in initiatives such as “Projeto 1 curadorx, 1 hora” (Project One Curator per Hour), which have interviewed professionals in order to organize a picture of contemporary thinking in curatorship, serves as an inspiration. Starting November 2020 we plan to also periodically release exclusive content shared by Black and Indigenous curators.

Opening night of the exhibition Diálogos e Transgressões (Conversations and Transgressions), presented at Sesc Santo Amaro from November 18, 2017 to February 18, 2018. Curated by Luciara Ribeiro. Photo by Raquel Santos