THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TRAP The use of pictorial vocabularies drawn from the history of monumental painting and a manifest interest in the process that activated their spatialization orient the ways in which Thiago Martins de Melo has developed the body of his work. Interspersed with images-in-movement that owe their existence to painting, they function, in many cases, as a sort of animated collage on canvas, completed with thick lines of paint that invade television écrans and alter the surface and nature of the exhibited material, as a way of framing his sculptures and objects as elusive elements of the painting, stripping his work of any linguistic purism. In seeing self-representation as an element of embodiment, the artist not only imposes on himself the figure of the ghost, but also operates on a two-way street, taking on the image of aggressor and victim, hero and anti-hero. He incites a tragic catharsis in the home environment, beginning a trajectory that would shift, years later, to his formulation of “ethnic-social catharsis.” [1]
Tuned into movements beyond painting, he switches between fecund moments and affronts produced with fragments of bodies and a latent savagery. Dogs cry out and howl. Genitalia encroach insistently on the ceiling of the house-cum-trap, opening vanishing points to the limits of the private. They are phallic spears. Pointing upwards, they indicate the space between the legs as a site where the great mysteries of life reside, in a close dialogue with Pietro Aretino. This is a family album whose intransitive associations spring from the coming-together of archetypical images. Along with the couple, bones and vanitas are embedded in narratives that contain both pleasure and trauma. The Legacy of Iroko or the Bed of Ulysses (2010) [p. 233] structures images that combine fertility, progeny and a couple as an allegory of libidinal force, attacking the ghosts who are about to strike at the root of the tree that holds up their son, depicted at the top. Iroko is the entity that personifies it. The threatened legacy is the son, he who retains the trace. The pair depicted at the bottom by two ghosts is wielding imposing chainsaws, which return to the artist’s production as the presence of devastation. The Iroko tree is responsible for the connection that allowed all the Orishas access to the earthly realm. [2] In connecting worlds, it intercedes across time and ancestry. For this reason, in the Ketu candomblé tradition, Iroko is the protector of sacred trees. Hence the comparison with the event narrated in The Odyssey, after the massacre of the suitors, when Ulysses, upon returning home, is prompted to prove his identity in an affront set up by Penelope, when she requests that their bed be installed in the garden, where the traveler might rest until his identity could be proved. Ulysses asserts that only the help of a God would allow him to remove the bed—built by the hero on and around a sacred and still rooted olive tree, adorned with precious metals and furs—from its place of origin. To the right of the bed perforated by the Iroko tree, a painting inside the painting presents the Radha-Krishna pair: they are Kamadeva, a Sanskrit word that comprises kama, with its dual meanings—both lust and immaculate love—fused together and originating from the divine couple, deva. In the enclosure, there is movement in each scene: the limit of the sky is overcome by the Iroko tree which protects the child; the roof is pierced by phallic spears; an immovable piece of furniture serves to attest the singularity of the hero; and the presence of Kamadeva evokes jouissance in its jhulana (sway). We might also associate these encounters with the impregnable contact that the painting reveals, be it with chaos, madness or with the imminence of tragic destruction, which make their presence known actively like the declarations of Zarathustra in “On Reading and Writing.” As if the couple were attentive to those who write with their own blood; as if they suspected mediocre people who only read to pass the time—since reasonable people are rarely seen or let themselves be seen by things, as Manoel de Barros aptly noted. As if they were saying that life is loved not because one is accustomed to it, but for the love that structures it. Or that the madness that inhabits life resides, in part and occasionally, in reason. This would be the condition for believing in a God who knew how to dance and would cast their demon as a spirit wandering through their nightmares, moving with solemnity and moderation, dignified and profound.
Uterus House (2011) [p.234] or Iris Fucked (2010) [p. 235] weigh self-representation and the family portrait down with such strangeness that they also confuse madness, love, mirrored experience and travestissement. In the latter, the woman depicted in the upper part references the goddess who lends her name to the work. She appears next to a couple wearing dog masks who crack the ceiling of the house with their spears. This is the opening of The Ceiling (2010) [p. 226], where the act of breaking through the top of the house gives the painting its name. This act produces a vocabulary specific to this fruitful period. The vertical cross-section seems to allude to the breaking of Diderot’s “fourth wall,” integrating the act [3] into the space where it is shown, as a way of bringing the subject into the picture and vice-versa. With bodies laying on the ground, covered in gods such as Durga in his fight against Mahisha, supported by an iconography of vanitas and a particular animalistic bravura, each painting contains a chapter of a plot that unfolds in attempts to usurp the ambiguity of the house, seen in an imprecise manner as a trap and a resting place simultaneously.
In Iris Fucked, the goddess dons the apparel of the Virgin. The enormous mouth of a ferocious dog emerges from her womb, ready to strike. This is the cycle of the dog in its paroxysm. Seen from below, along the central axis of the painting, a reclining self-portrait with an erection is stimulated by a hand that emerges from outside of the painting, appearing to reanimate the undead body. To his right, a cadaver mirrors the artist’s portrait; to his left, the scene is capped off with a couple of brazenly screwing dogs.
Seen from another angle, the foreign hand in the foreground of the painting is similar to that which introduces the subject to the narrative of Nicolas Poussin. This approximation also supposes a sort of reconfiguration of the scene built around the ceremony performed for Priapus, God of fertility, painted by the artist on a large scale between 1634 and 1638. In this case, the mythology reworked by Iris Fucked would indicate that the reclined self-portrait is an incarnation of the God Priapus, who was responsible for corrupting the virginity of the messenger of the gods. The hand that is external to the frame would be attributed to Hymenaeus, the God of marriage, who appears cross-dressed in Poussin’s painting. This hand generated questions when restorers realized, in 2009, that there were additional layers of painting beside it which covered Priapus’ erect phallus. Entitled Hymenaios Disguised as a Woman During an Offering to Priapus, the work belongs to the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP). However, the act of modesty that hid the central iconographic scene of the work was done before it arrived in Brazil, when it belonged to the Spanish royal family. The extra paint was likely called for by fundamentalist Catholics, who disfigured the moment at which the young Hymenaeus, disguised as a woman, performs a sacrifice to fertility. If we follow this farfetched assumption, in Iris Fucked the body of the God in disguise resembles the identity of the Rebis Mestiza, a hermaphrodite containing both masculine and feminine energy; she/he would be the one to take Priapus to the virgin Iris. Lastly, we should recall that the name of the god in disguise stems from hymen, a vaginal membrane that preserves the woman in an untouched state, the main characteristic of Electra’s daughter.
The narrative, however, does not seem to exclusively correspond to this explicit passivity. The presence of the ferocious dog at the center of Iris’ womb cries out in colossal madness, serving as a counterpoint to the placid portrait of the goddess. Along with the couple wearing dog masks, they reaffirm a desire to confront one’s own animality. [4] In response to Clarice Lispector’s remarks about the animality of the subject, “I don’t humanize the animal because it’s a crime—one must respect their nature—what I do is animalize myself,” [5] Veronica Stigger, curator of The Uterus of the World, counters, reminding us that “confronting the animal in Lispector is like standing before a mirror that not only reveals what one wants to hide, animality, but also compels one to take on what one had hitherto feared to face. It is through the cry—a sound before speech or any other form of articulate language—that the human approaches the animal, skirting dehumanization.” [6] The reclining self-portrait of Uterus House, covered by a wild animal skin, and the cry of the dog from Iris’ womb may be the best expressions of this liminal condition. The self-portrait that contains a model of a house on fire bears similarities to Iris Fucked: both are wrapped up in an introspection expressed by the destabilizing experience of the mirror, while indirectly focusing their gaze on the other who watches them. This double movement and the implosion of etiquette inaugurate the spectral strangeness that hangs over the painting as a whole. This is a mirror-painting, without ever having been a window. It returns to itself that which it reveals. For this reason the catharsis includes, above all, the Other, Uterus House being one of the most fruitful moments in this sense. Each in its own way, these early paintings construct a paradigm of “mediality,” [7] insofar as they stand as objects of the sensible, exchanging relations with undefined, migrant bodies: gods, man, woman, and animals. All projected by the mirror-painting that shows the image of the “being of strangeness,” [8] at the same time leading one to reflect on the condition of that which becomes mutant in the paintings. Taken by storm, the subject who expresses disgust at the scene is usually the one who promotes adherence to the images. Hence, each narrative claims the right to produce a “separation of the form of a thing from the place of its existence.” [9] The image-becoming that is brought about by each moment with these paintings, being an intriguing witness of the unseen, arises from this space made house-trap, where the subject is captured in the mire and impracticability of desire, amidst the flames that destroy houses, themselves invaded by animalities and ghosts that afflict the banal.
GAME OF THE CANNIBAL HUNTERS Unlike individual mythologies that orbit exclusively around the intimate, the narrative plot that marks the artist’s early work marked a crossroads from which it was important to move on. Incinerating the uterus-house or breaking through its ceiling with a figuration of libido does as much, while producing an even more complex struggle, namely the exclusion in which the state of Maranhão languishes, and the power structures that maintain the region in a reality close to that of the 16th century. Epistemologically renewed, this new crossroads brings Latin America closer to Africa, creating tension with hegemonic discursive practices and, above all, producing a particular idea of the theatrical scene, apparently in line with José Celso Martinez Corrêa’s Teatro Oficina, insofar as the scene functions as a space of incorporation of entities, with no backdrop, curtain or delimited stage. Sharp and complex, the uncertain place of the scene and the discourse that renews it unveil the fusion of worlds fusion of worlds. They inaugurate the Nagô-Cartesian Theater: a universe occupied by scenes created by “fables of dystopia” and a hope resting on the magnanimity of the Rebis Mestiza. With a chromatic range that promotes drama and abrupt gestures, this work piles signs upon signs, further demarcating its visual vocabulary. The theatricality which is created functions outside the plan. It fuses alchemical practices, syncretic rites and an ancestry that gave rise to the miscegenation of the continent. This coincides with an attempt to evoke the difficult healing of wounds caused by bloodshed from the genocide of Indians, quilombolas [10] and riverside communities, all reflections of the persistence of the dynamics of slavery. [11] The space attributed to Cartesianism in this theatricality does not call for a derisory reading. Rather, it is a commentary on Descartes’ speculations when he identified the pineal gland as the source of consciousness and the seat of the soul. However, bringing antagonistic universes together means altering our perception of the space occupied by the dissection table in his work. It is the re-setting of a stage for the negotiation of anonymous, worn-out, exalted bodies, or bringing into play the historiography that defines these bodies. The resonances that emerge from this barbarism, the obscurity resulting from the reconstitution of denied narratives and the resultant adherence to the tradition of the chance encounter form the set of pieces reassembled under the aegis of a singular theater, whose forceps-assisted birth seems to be concerned with confronting animistic ideas with Cartesian dualism. Responsible for the carnality of the artist’s paintings and the placing of silhouettes over pictorial minefields, these encounters allow for free passage through an ambivalent cosmogony, which supports the notion that “every civilization that repudiates its barbaric potential has already surrendered in the face of barbarism.” [12] No matter how much the figure of the raped woman, the bastard, the mestizo, and the indigent function as the skin of his language, or that which is deepest, according to Paul Valéry, it is worth noting how squatters’ rights, claimed in the name of communities whose lands have been usurped, establish a singular cosmopolitics in this scene, generating powerful acts of resistance, uniting voices and integrating temporalities that are not limited to the colonial past of the Latin American continent. Rather, they confuse records and narratives, both historical and mythological, with the interest of bringing them closer to the adversity and scorn that corrode the present. They echo the motto of indigenous peoples: to live well, not better. All the while producing sharp criticism of how this enunciation has been instrumentalized by a Manichean society that destroys the beliefs and imaginaries of these forcibly besieged peoples.
In this context, The Cross and the Neocoronelist Throne (2013) [pp. 86-87] works as a figuration of enthroned shame, a history in collusion with the industry of genetically modified substances, which updates issues related to the imposition of underdevelopment in our continent. Without a recognizable face, the pig’s head does not do justice to the animal, whose habits, strange to a society has learned to sweep messes under the carpet, usually serve to illustrate the illustratable. The entity in question is missing a head. Although Eduardo Galeano referred to the Florentine Codex, in which the Nahuatl text presents the conquerors as “crav[ing] for gold like hungry swine,” [13] and Snowball and Napoleon, in Animal Farm (1945), led the “triumph of the pigs” after gaining access to language and becoming distinct animals in the kingdom that worshipped animism by preaching equality for all, the enthroned figure situated between scorpions of the UDR (Ruralist Democratic Union) and the CNA (National Confederation of Agriculture) is still honored by receiving a pig’s head, as it dispenses with any sort of figuration. As the ghost at the helm of the party, the pig’s head makes an obscene gesture to the observer: “Fuck you, we’re living in the era of legalized corruption.” [14] However, the fact that this figuration reinvents the satire of the “triumphant pig” on Tupinambá [15] territory explains the curtain of portraits in the background. On more than one occasion, the artist has shown an interest in calling a pig a pig. And although his visage is many-faced, his methodology seems to be replicated throughout history. Thus, in a comment made by Žižek about the super-rich involved in the Panama Papers leak, the author invoked the way in which Karl Marx described the German Ancien Régime in 1843, comparing it to a persistent rhetoric, replicated here in the enthroned neocoronel: [16] “[the regime] imagines that it believes in itself and demands that the world should imagine the same thing.” The difference here is one of scale: the world refers to small communities deliberately left uninformed by the forces of oppressive power. Žižek continues: “In such a situation, to put shame on those in power becomes a weapon itself. […] This is our situation today: We are facing the shameless cynicism of the existing global order, whose agents only imagine that they believe in their ideas of democracy, human rights, etc., and through moves like WikiLeaks and the Panama Papers disclosures, the shame—our shame for tolerating such power over us—is made more shameful by publicizing it.” [17]
Beyond depicting a scene of devastation in which stacks of tree trunks complete the picture on the right, The Cross and the Neocoronelist Throne functions as a weaponized painting in the shape of a Greek cross whose horizon, constructed with thick lines of red blood, evokes “the open veins of Latin America”—in debt, subservient, destitute in its “gardens transformed into deserts,” living with specters responsible for the cultivation of genetically modified foods that do not cease to turn the continent into junk. Surrendered to stains that build a smokescreen, the horizon of Tree of Blood—Fire that Consumes Pigs (2013) [p.137] does not invoke the veins-lines of The Cross and the Neocoronelist Throne. Rather, in this painting, the veins/lines outline the silhouette of the pig, inscribed on another curtain formed by portraits whose popularity and acceptance have divided Brazil since its origin. The project is witnessed, in the same painting, by another group of figures, placed inside the canopy of a long tree that has the coat of arms of the Federative Republic of Brazil at its root. Although the attempt to compare the circular formation with the distribution of stars of the coat of arms in its interior is hasty, it is important to note that the arrangement of the portraits in the canopy resembles this bloodstained sign of the Republic. There is some correlation with the principle of sabotage in historical painting, found in Nicolas-Antoine Taunay’s paintings by Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, who sees the artist as having turned the genre into “a waltz to be danced with the majestic nature of Brazil.” [18] With the difference that in this case sabotage works by attempting to construct a ritualistic dance with the slave Anastácia [19] at its center, as a spokesperson of history written against the grain, and in which we are all barbarians. In this scene constructed by the artist, a blood-tree brings together figures who, by their presence, force a reappraisal of the status of heroes. Asserting the project of painting “whiteness,” they provide the main elements for the conclusion of the sabotage. With their gazes fixed on the other before them, they incite a re-evaluation of history from the point of view of the act of resistance that every little space of the painting relentlessly manifests.
Another recurring presence in the artist’s work is the use of crosses. The cross that forms the painting of the neocoronel on his throne reinforces this link in the very shape of the work, featuring crosses aligned with agricultural tools across the bottom, divided by a space delimited by barbed wire, a recurring element in paintings made in the period when Brazil saw the emergence of an egregious resistance to agrarian reform and the demarcation of indigenous lands. This still-ongoing historical problem is very close to the “the cross on the hilt of the sword,” as Eduardo Galeano wrote, alluding to the slaughter produced by Christianity through a project of acculturation anchored in an irresponsible and ever-growing catechetical fever of missionary and salvationist nature. This is why, in other works, the cross is the tool for the sodomy of slaves and colonels, sustaining a system of developmentalism devoid of memory, caresses, or spiritual values. In that regard, it is through the cross that the idea of a soulless people is disseminated. The cross is to be seen atop the chapel in The Sodomy of Whiteness in the Coronel’s Little Chapel (2011) [p. 225], which shows a self-portrait echoed in different actions. As the white figure with a tin of black paint, it pours it on the coronel, at the same time as it paints itself. Appearing in three registers, the self-portrait is indebted to the compositional mode with which Masaccio built his narrative in The Tribute Money. In the case of the painting of whiteness, the coronel responsible for the poverty of one of Brazil’s richest regions is sodomized and drenched in cans of paint. The skin is seen as the deep surface of Latin America. To paint it implies reflecting on mestizo syncretism and restructuring existing rules through it. It is in this minefield that the artist foresees the event in which the matriarchy of Pindorama succumbs, crucified to the sound of extractivist chainsaws. There are dances of destruction onstage, choreographed by state-owned companies who polish the boots of the neocoronels of dirty iron. Thus, in Wounds of Dirty Iron (2012) [pp.108-09], the representation of the country appears entirely stained with blood, taken from the same red that had once traced the horizon in nerve-lines. Incidentally, the path of mining companies that collude with and strengthen struggles for the domination of indigenous territories tinge the ocean red. Barbed wire and impotent indigenous women appear next to a country covered in blood and vanitas, at the service of automakers whose logos (Ford, Nissan, BMW, GM) justify fratricidal wars still kept secret. A phantasmatic Republic transforms its multiethnic territory into a place made homogenous by the elite who prevent the demarcation of indigenous lands and build armies in collusion with the armed power of the state. Alongside these works, The Matriarchy of Pindorama Succumbs to the Governmental Dance of the Chainsaws of the Androgynous Presidential Phallus (2012) [pp. 200-01] adulterates official narratives, celebrating the fusion of the barbarian and the civilized. In acts of sheer violence and unrestrained modesty, the pig in the necktie embodies the scum of society strengthened by the power of the dollar sign, which also appears on the brooch, on the pigface’s tie, and on the sunglasses of the fellow who holds the chainsaw and destroys others’ lands, under the protection of the image of the Federative Republic of Brazil, which, according to well-meaning souls, may have been drawn from Eugène Delacroix’s La Liberté guidant le peuple [Liberty Leading the People] (1830).
OTHER REMARKS [20] ith Liberty Leading the People in such a contradictory scenario, we must urgently find a way out of the “crossroads complex” [21] eating our brains alive in this game of cannibal hunters. As bastards, they told us that they would guide our habits and that we would walk together. We learned, a short while ago, to resist. But we have already set an example on that score. There is resistance in young Latin America. It is vibrant and licentious. The Coronation of the Rebis Mestiza (2013) [p. 67] by Indians in a dense virgin forest crosses the dominant mediatic forces and seems to embody its best allegory. She is born on the margins. She goes about her business discreetly, edging her way through. She does not reach the masses, but acts in singularity. She combats the current functional illiteracy. The mental torture and covert barbarism that arrived on the ship of the conquerors, born from the excess of occupation that we always see in slaveholding regimes. It was Nietzsche who said that “due to lack of rest, our civilization is moving towards a new barbarism.” [22]
Although rupturing the uterus-house is a well-aimed project, the crossroads created by the state of exclusion make us continue to suspect that “we are fucked,” [23] since “life in Brazil was never worth much.” [24] As Chico Mendes already knew, Martyrdom (2014) [pp. 138-41] in Brazil is born at the crossroads. Having a spiritually shielded body is fundamental, but it does not guarantee life. Sete Flechas has seen for centuries that while life wasn’t worth much to start, “today it is worth even less.” Trapped in cannibalistic systems, hollow heads roll. Brains are served with vinaigrette. [25] The elegant gentlemen’s henchmen know how to evaluate a good brain by looking at attentive figures. And anyone who thinks has a rare, highly valued brain. Let it then be consumed, think the elegant gentlemen, who devour it readily. Attention: “the head-eaters discover those who think, because those who think, think better while standing still.” For that matter, I can’t tarry. I must go. Don’t stay where you are for long. We’re in danger. Pretending to be late may be the solution.
Addressed, I hear:
“Hands up, wise-ass, or I’ll bust a cap in your head.
I said: Sure, of course, but what did I do?
If you need my id, I have it on me.
Another one said: I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, don’t move.
I want to know what you were thinking.
I estimate your price based on the mental level
That you’re using out there.
And then I’ll tell you what your head is worth.” [26]
Orwell: 1984—the future is backwards.
1984: “Podres poderes” [Putrid Powers]: “Will this stupid discourse of mine / Need to sound, need to be heard / for a zillion years more” [27]
1984: “Metrô linha 743” [Subway Line 743]—“Who’s the bastard responsible for all this mess?”
1984 + 30: Suspicion. Violence: “We revolve around it like an animal chained to a pole. […] I suspect, however, that there is a close link between violence and urban stupidity. Besides living in São Paulo, I have been to Salvador, São Luís, Manaus and Natal recently—I suspect that they are all cities rotting under the sun. […] I suspect that we are fucked.” [28]
1984 + 30: Martyrdom: The Amazon River is the responsibility of the world. It is suspected that the crossroads and barbed wires are a trap. That we’re still stupid. We ran red lights. We missed the green. How much longer will these ridiculous tyrants last? Martyrdom: Yes, the stupidity and incompetence of Catholic America preserve its tyrants. The same stupidity that kept the party going on the other side of the Atlantic. Martyrdom: “Or every civilian and every overseer / With his stupidity will cause much blood to flow / In the swamplands, in the cities / in the scrub forests and in the mines.” Martyrdom: “To die and to kill of hunger / Of anger and thirst / Are too often / Natural acts.” Martyrdom: Paulo Fonteles, forgotten by some, unknown by many. Martyrdom: “nameless people who fought for land saturate the field of representation.” The totem is Martyrdom. Rifles and tires open routes by forceps. Heads roll to the floor. Religious syncretism is also attacked. The right to contact the unknown is cut off. Life is closed beyond the visible. Martyrdom is bare life. It is the cycle of the dog in perpetual continuity.
Martyrdom defines us as invaders and usurpers by collusion. The barbarians are us, the civilized. We exterminated the other and the others. The latter are the Jaguar, the Doce River, the Awá Guajá, Eldorado dos Carajás. It is the syncretic head falling to the ground.
My fallen head, loose on the floor.
I saw my body without it for the first and last time
[…]
It’s serious advice to you
I died and I don’t even know what month it was. [29]
Brazil, 2016. [30]
1 I owe many of the ideas indicated as primary sources to conversations with Thiago Martins de Melo in São Luís, throughout his residence at Chão SLZ, as well as to the sound recordings sent during the research process.
2 Translator’s note: Orishas are entities in spirit possession cults of African origin practiced in Brazil, such as candomblé and umbanda.
3 Although unlikely, the association between these paintings and dramatic theory makes sense, so long as it is set against the artist’s later work with Nagô-Cartesian Theater—which not only features a breaking of the “fourth wall,” but also actively encourages it through a sort of labyrinth-theater, in which protagonists, spectators, and supporting actors mingle in jointly constructed narratives.
4 This subject is addressed in a crucial part of the Uterus of the World exhibit entitled “ancestral cry,” a project curated by Veronica Stigger from the collection of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), inspired by the fanciful notion of a “wandering uterus” and the writings of Clarice Lispector. See: Veronica Stigger, O útero do mundo [The Uterus of the World] (catalogue). São Paulo: Museu de Arte Moderna, 2016.
5 Clarice Lispector, Água viva. Rio de Janeiro: Artenova, 1973, p. 58, (translated by Elizabeth Lowe and Earl Fitz. The Stream of Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
6 V. Stigger, op. cit., p. 9.
7 Coccia, E. & Stuart, S. A. & Attell, K. Sensible Life: A Micro-ontology of the Image. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016, p. 28.
8 Id., ibid.
9 Id., ibid., p. 19.
10 Translator’s note: “Quilombo” is a legal category of identity inscribed in Brazil’s 1988 Constitution that has been appropriated by Afro-descendant communities throughout Brazil to claim land rights and social policies from the state. See: Eliane Cantarino O’Dwyer, Quilombos: Identidade étnica e territorialidade. Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 2002.
11 Thiago Martins de Melo e Josué Mattos, “Binômios#4”. Florianópolis: 3C; Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 2014, pp. 98-109.
12 Slavoj Žižek, Vivendo no fim dos tempos. Trans. Maria Beatriz de Medina. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2012, p. 21.
13 Eduardo Galeano, As veias abertas da América Latina. Trans. Sergio Faraco. Porto Alegre: L&PM, 2016, p. 39. (English excerpt taken from Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. New York: Monthly Press, 1973, p.18).
14 The idea of legalized corruption is what makes Žižek believe in the greedy resourcefulness of bankers, politicians and executives in our legal and economic system. See: Slavoj Žižek, “A banalidade do mal, sob o capitalismo”. Available at: http://outraspalavras.net/posts/zizek-e-a-banalidade-do-mal-sob-
-o-capitalismo/. Accessed Nov. 6, 2016. (English excerpt from Slavoj Žižek, “Explaining the Panama
Papers, Or, Why Does A Dog Lick Himself?” Available at: http://www.newsweek.com/panama-papers-
-dogs-themselves-north-korea-vladimir-putin-444791. Accessed 01/31/2017).
15 Translator’s note: The term tupinambá refers to indigenous groups who inhabited the eastern coast of Brazil from the 17th century to the present day.
16 Translator’s note: “Coronelism” refers to the system, in the wake of slavery, by which local agrarian oligarchs (coronéis, or “colonels”) controlled most of the rural population.
17 Id., ibid.
18 Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, O sol do Brasil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008, p. 247.
19 Translator’s note: The figure of the slave Anastácia is the subject of much devotion in Brazilian popular Catholicism. Anastácia was a slave woman of African descent who possessed incredible beauty.
Because of this, her owners treated her with cruelty and forced her to wear a muzzle-like facemask.
She is thought to have performed acts of healing and other miracles. Although not officially recognized
by the Catholic Church, Anast.cia has a diverse following across Catholic and Umbanda spiritualist
traditions. See: J. Burdick, Blessed Anastácia: Women, Race, and Popular Christianity in Brazil. New
York: Routledge, 1998.
20 The final remarks of this text are drawn from narratives that George Orwell masterfully introduced in his book 1984 (1949), along with two songs, “Podres poderes” [Putrid Powers] and “Metrô linha 743” [Subway line 743], released in 1984, by Caetano Veloso and Raul Seixas, respectively. The confluence of these songs with the highlight of Orwell’s iconic book provides cross readings of two other works, Martyrdom and I Suspect That We Are. Both were produced thirty years later, in 2014, by Thiago Martins de Melo for the 31st São Paulo Art Biennial, and by Nuno Ramos for Folha de S. Paulo.
21 Gerardo Mosquera, Caminar con el diablo – textos sobre arte, internacionalismo y culturas. Madrid: EXIT Publicaciones, 2010, p. 90.
22 Cited by Byung-Chul Han, Sociedade do cansaço. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2015, p. 37.
23 Nuno Ramos, “Suspeito que estamos…”. Available at: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/opiniao/2014/05/1460999-nuno-ramos-suspeito-que-estamos.shtml. Accessed Nov. 4, 2016.
24 Id., ibid.
25 The character in “Metrô linha 743” [Subway 743] consumed by cannibal hunters, notices the table where he is to be served with vinaigrette.
26 Raul Seixas, “Metrô linha 743” [Subway Line 743]. Rio de Janeiro: Som Livre, 1984.
27 Caetano Veloso, “Velô” Philips Records, Brasil, 1984.
28 N. Ramos, op. cit.
29 R. Seixas, op. cit.
30 In 2017, PEC 55 (Proposed Amendment to the Constitution nº 55) was approved, freezing expenditures for twenty years in Brazil. Health, education and culture are affected in such a way that the regression in question seems to experience the best part of the fiction mentioned above. The irony only deepens when the dates are compared: December 13, 2016 and December 13, 1968, the latter being the date on which AI-5 (Institucional Act Number 5) was promulgated, bringing the military regime in Brazil to its darkest phase. Instead of seeking to save the economy by compromising the population, the illegitimate president and his suspect staff could freeze spending on corporate cards. At times of spending cuts, only four months after the coup d’état that marked the impeachment of elected president Dilma Rousseff, expenses have already gone over 12,000,000 Brazilian reais—that’s just on the corporate card used by the coup-mongering president. #temerout.
Pt