The Lanchonete Cultural Association functions as a contemporary art initiative, established in a territory of Black and Indigenous ancestry located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, specifically in the Gamboa neighborhood, an area known as Little Africa.
Institutional Action and Critique
The activities developed by Lanchonete cover areas of art, education, and clinical practice, directed at children, adolescents, and women residing in informal settlements in Gamboa. However, the institution defines itself as an unrestricted studio, which implies allowing the participation of those historically excluded from contemporary art spaces in Brazil. More profoundly, this openness serves as a critique of the colonial character inherent in the Brazilian art system.
By using the term colonial, the text does not refer to the artistic style of the colonial period, but rather to the colonial nature of the art institution and system in the country. This system cannot be analyzed in isolation from processes of territorial and epistemic violence directed at indigenous peoples and enslaved African populations. It is essential to criticize the device—the set of practices and technologies of the Brazilian contemporary art system—especially in a territory marked by Indigenous memory and Black diaspora.
Breaking the Narcissistic Pact
For any proposal for the installation of this device to occur, it is essential to break with the narcissistic pact of whiteness regarding art, that is, the belief that contemporary practices in Brazil are free from this radical critique. It becomes necessary to discuss contemporary Brazilian colonial art, establishing this as a starting point and guide for counteractions against this system.
Only through this approach is it possible to establish a partnership with the Black population residing in the region, creating a two-way street where the generating device, contemporary Brazilian colonial art, is constantly called into question. The art system itself is strained, exposing its practices, exclusions, and elitist ways of occupying territories inhabited by populations vulnerable due to the colonial processes of which art is a part. Thus, opening the doors transcends an act of charity, configuring itself as a political and activist action that questions the foundations for the existence of a space for contemporary colonial art in an Afro-diasporic and Indigenous territory.
History of Little Africa
The Little Africa region is located in the central zone of Rio de Janeiro, currently encompassing the neighborhoods of Gamboa, Saúde, Santo Cristo, Morros da Providência, do Pinto, and da Conceição, as well as Praça Mauá, including Pedra do Sal and Rua Marechal Floriano. The name was created in the early 20th century by the samba singer and visual artist Heitor dos Prazeres (1898-1966) to designate the port area near Praça Onze. During the period from 1850 to 1920, the area was predominantly inhabited by Black Africans and their Brazilian descendants, constituting a notable Black cultural hub, highlighted by samba, capoeira, and candomblé. Prominent figures of Little Africa include Machado de Assis, Pixinguinha, Aniceto do Império, Sinhô, Donga, João da Baiana, Tia Ciata, and the babalorixá João Alabá. Heitor used the expression to emphasize the concentration of Afro-descendant culture and community in Rio, in contrast to the Europeanized city of the time.
Urban Reform and Resistance
In the early 20th century, Rio de Janeiro underwent intense urban reform under the motto 'Rio civilizes itself,' inspired by Baron Haussmann, with Mayor Pereira Passos seeking to transform the capital into a tropical version of Paris. This modernization and sanitization resulted in a massive displacement of the local population, with the construction of European structures. Notable works included the opening of Avenida Central (now Rio Branco), Avenida Beira-Mar, the remodeling of the Port of Rio de Janeiro, the creation of Praça Mauá, and the construction of the Theatro Municipal, a symbol of the Europeanized city. This represented not only territorial cleansing but also an attempt at cultural epistemicide, where what did not fit into the Theatro Municipal was considered neither art nor culture. It was in this context that Heitor dos Prazeres coined Little Africa as a counterpoint and Afro-diasporic cultural resistance.
A century later, the port area of Rio was again subject to major urban interventions. In 2009, Mayor Eduardo Paes launched the Porto Maravilha project within the Olympic Project. Although Eduardo Paes showed appreciation for samba and carnival, he also admired the achievements of Pereira Passos, honoring him with a plaque in Jardim do Valongo renovated during the previous administration, during the inauguration of the first phase of the works in July 2012. Despite the differences between yesterday's and today's removals, they share similarities: the main target is the low-income population, mostly Black. Parallel to the urban reorganization, the Museum of Art of Rio – MAR (2013) and the Museum of Tomorrow (2015) were inaugurated, marking the process of gentrification in the area.
Art, Activism, and Minority Turn
The year 2013, the date of the MAR's inauguration, coincides with the June Journeys, a popular movement that introduced new forms of political action, impacting minority struggles, such as feminist, LGBTQIAPN+, anti-racist, Indigenous, and ableist agendas. The Brazilian scenario was in a post-affirmative politics period of the Lula (2002-2009) and Dilma (2009-2016) governments, and also saw the rise of an extreme right with agendas contrary to the advances of these groups. In this context, the field of arts was directly affected, serving both as a target of criticism and as a space for experimenting with a new 'sharing of the sensible,' as proposed by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, free from the moral and aesthetic codes of the colonial, racial, and heterosexist patriarchal system of Brazilian institutions.
If the insurrection revealed the marks of centuries of colonial and heterosexist patriarchal oppression on people, it also functioned as a place of affirmation and experimentation of other ways of life. On March 1, 2013, the anniversary of the city of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro, the MAR was inaugurated. While the interior of the museum received important political and cultural figures, the external manifestation, in the form of a happening, presented a critical counterimage to the first cultural facility of Porto Maravilha. This diverse crowd gathered Black, trans, women, Indigenous, art collectives, anarchists, and punks. A cacophony, a sonic confusion generated by voices and improvised instruments made from various objects invaded the museum, confronting the pomp of the institutional celebration. This was a dress rehearsal for the general jam of the June Journeys. What was being experienced? Perhaps not in the colonial sense of the term. Was it a political manifestation? Perhaps not in the classical sense of the left. In reality, it was a mix, an articulation between artistic and activist practices.
This indistinction between artistic and activist practices is the core of the counter-manifesto What is an aesthetic-political action? and the actions of the Coletivo 28 de Maio, indicating a new way of doing politics in Brazil since 2010, the so-called minority turn in the political and artistic making of the last decade. This turn created a zone of mutual indiscernibility between art and activism. On one hand, activist agendas entered the field of art, challenging its know-power devices through artistic actions; on the other hand, activist practices adopted aesthetic tactics and strategies specific to art to intervene in the social field. Thus, the activist issue is not a theme inserted into artists' works, but rather an activist way of creating art focused on criticizing the art field itself as a social space. Activist actions do not imitate artistic procedures, but understand that contemporary activism fights against the know-power devices that act upon bodies (biopower), or as Jacques Rancière proposed, upon the conditions of possibility of giving feeling (the sharing of the sensible).
Artistic Counter-systems
Thus, the minority turn demonstrated a counter-system of artistic practices operating outside and inside the Brazilian institutional, heteropatriarchal, and colonial art system. Cripta Djan stated in an interview with Felipe Blumen – Tapume, in August 2014, that pixo (using 'x' to emphasize its aesthetic-political character) represents the most conceptual in contemporary art. It is crucial to reject the current concept of art not only to reveal other ways of practicing art today, but mainly to recover the dissident character contained in the Western conception of art.
The text exemplifies this change: while Godard is considered culture because he is mainstream, the performance of José Guajajara's tree in Aldeia Marakan’à (December 2013) is seen as art. Similarly, Marina Abramović is classified as culture, but the act of exposing the breasts of Indianarae Siqueira, a trans leader, is considered art. And Duchamp is seen as culture, while the reinvention of the school way of life by secondary occupation is defined as art.
Artistic Commensality
In this environment of political and artistic insurrection, the artist Thelma Vilas Boas, in 2016, made a shift in her career, installing a wood-burning stove amidst the ruins of the Porto Maravilha project, as reported in an interview with Arte& magazine.