NOT-YOUR-NEGRESS
owning negro female identities and imagery in brazil
‘not-your-negress’ refers to unspeakable, uncategorized, unknown meanings, imagery & territories that black women hold as their own
I have been puzzled by powerful visionary black male leaders who can speak and act passionately in resistance to racial domination and accept and embrace sexist domination of women, by feminist white women who work daily to eradicate sexism but who have major blind spots when it comes to acknowledging and resisting racism and white supremacist domination of the planet. [1]
We, black girls, stand with our menaced humanity on that very corner where these two prejudices connect. In a somewhat Pollyanna-ish conclusion, later in this same article bell hooks moves on to advocate a radical “love ethics” which could promote the acknowledgement of blind spots spreading an empathetic social awareness about “the domination of others”. While she successfully points out the global damage triggered by Western egocentrism, arguing her focus on Love as a relevant matter for academic studies, by another hand she overlooks the role of intimate love relationships in the wider picture of racial and gender oppression. By doing so, hooks skips the extensive chapter of gaslighting violence [2] as a homemade tool to undermine women’s self esteem, limit their ambitions and, concerning the Arts, preclude the creation, production and distribution of artworks to convey their own voices & visions. The absence of a supportive male partner, in heterossexual couples, is often a rezone why married women lack time and solitude to develop their creations and to pursue a career in the Arts. It has also big responsibility in the fact that established black female artists, even nowadays, practically do not exist.
The self-portrait of African-Brazilian painter Yara Ligiéro (1993), produced when she was barely 18, is like a glance into the consciousness of a dark skinned woman who protects herself by leaving words to rest unspoken. This idea, of artist’s speech willingly still, can only be grasped when viewer gets close to the canvas, recognizing a collage of tiny newspaper words, attached to her face’s bottom as a mask. A black girl then emerges to adult life as an observing silent subject, aware of the dominant opposition she will (always) have to deal with. But she doesn’t look either lost or alone. That triple corner behind her is somewhere she’s coming out from, not backwards into. In her newly started adventures, as a black woman artist, her passion sets the larger wall in fire. But she’s got also the dark wall of her black ancestry, and a handful of deep words/concepts to inform her steps forward. Words whose meanings the Cartesian male mind can’t start to scratch the surface of. “Who am I?” — she seems to ask. But there’s no Sphinx urgency, or relational anxiety, in her ocean like eyes. She’s cozy in her private contact with her inner feminine references. “Who is she?” — you might guess. She won’t bother to explain. What a coolness lays on such carelessness regarding viewer’s judgements of her! She’s no one you’ve already known; nothing you could suppose. She’s someone else, and feels at home staying not-understood. She’s none of the stereotypes you might rush to hang on a black woman’s shoulders. Not your house-maid, black mama, mistress; neither is she that poor intern, whom you’d pick in a favela [3], to “empower” in the maker workshops of your philantropic Arts ORG. She’s “not-your-negress” material, self-owned and self-significant. Yet, undefined, in process, an identity in progress like all 18 year olds should gloriously be. As the XXI century advances, imagery composed of (and toward) black female identities grows in various medium, still unseen (or superficially mentioned) by current critical appreciation.
Painter Maria Auxiliadora (1935–74), a pioneer African-Brazilian woman in the field, died marginalized at age 39. In a recent celebration of her artistic genius — an individual exhibition held at MASP, one of Brazil’s top museums, in 2018 — curators condemned the academic prejudices that caused her to die in poverty, unrecognized. Nevertheless, the cold pragmatic way they took to organize her paintings, wouldn’t go beyond the explicit narrative content of the scenes and portraits she chose to depict on her canvas: African cults, Folk parties, Self-portraits, Couples, Rural, Urban, Interiors. It felt as if they had kindly declined Artist’s invitation to a deeper experience through her imagetic propositions. Her desire to share her identitary perspectives and subjectivity was so intense that she used her own hair in the paint paste of her 3D pieces. Being two white males with bold academic background, acting in the name of a major venue, Adriano Pedrosa and Fernando Oliva performed a standard deference to a deceased black creator: praise her finished body of work, leave the rest unspoken. We’ve much to thank to this shift in mainstream curatorial behavior. While respectfully avoiding definitions of what they don’t actually know, they make room for uncategorized visions to join the conversation.
Maria Auxiliadora was honored with a standard deference to deceased black creators: praise her finished body of work, leave the rest unspoken
With eyes shut and mouth sensuously open, the black woman breastfeeding a childish white lady wants to communicate the beauty and power of her inner world. Her clothes have two rags stitched on it, one by the covered nipple, one about her knee. But it also has uncountable flowers, white and red, telling us something of the dialectics of her passions, at once hot and pure. As pointed out by Robert Farris Thompson [4], the watery blue color of her dress reveals her coolness, facing poverty without loosing the inward connection with her real spiritual self, which, according to Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau teachings[5] on Kongo chromatic symbolism, may as well be indicated by the yellow center of the flowers embroidered on her robe. Blossoming flowers show us an active female sexuality, hence Yin energy closes when at rest and opens up when excited. Full firm breasts also show an active feminine role, while the erected nipple speaks, again, about female sexual excitement. So do both women’s teeth, between a smile and a teasing bite. The white woman’s open mouth, in a willing receptive position, proposes a passive feminine role, while her childish features may indicate, more than an early age, a dependent, immature personality. Her hairdo and red lipstick tell us it’s an adult woman, in a baby look. Concealing the small white female’s chest & genitals, painter wisely avoids misunderstandings related to child sexualization. A background decorated with heart shaped prints, held by three blue flowers, suggests that this encounter/relationship has been enabled by the black woman’s mature way to seek self-satisfaction. With no visual representation of a chair, the frame around them may as well be a bed blancket, which she induces us to deem otherwise, playing general prejudices against her naivety on her behalf.
The specific condition of loneliness, which most black Brazilian women find themselves caught into, and our ways to survive it, are hardly covered by the concepts of Black Studies and Feminist Theories, that Western Academies got to project outside their walls. Although structural prejudices surely impact the production of knowledge, I do not see, however, that intellectual bias should be the main rezone why hegemonic literature in the West doesn’t risk a deeper approach on our films and visual art production. Ethiopian Filmmaker Haile Gerima mentioned a void of critical appreciation on his films formal aspects, saying that reviewers only saw the explicit contents of scripts/dialogues [6]; the gap between such critical regards and our negro female visual productions is way bigger. Hence mirroring one’s own (white) culture onto expressions from the entire world is no longer acceptable, critical analysts (employed by major media vehicles) seem not to know what’s to ask. In Brazil, the gap between mainstream analysts and black women’s film/art production is even larger than it is in Europe and the US, where Gerima was indeed heard, yet felt unseen. The endemic lack of pluralism in Brazilian social/cultural studies, has been slowly replaced by a repertoire of improvised self-representations, with an embarrassing repetition of folk acts filling in the agenda of yearly festivities. Negro artists visit Humanities campi in November, indigenous in April, feminists in March. Scattered groups dig into extracurricular subjects that, eventually, investigates black women’s imagery in film or in the visual arts. A regular chair to study our authorial imagetic production remains, still, unheard of to me. Racism isn’t the only rezone behind this status.
The dehumanization carried about by overlapping structures of racism and misogyny, in society as in the private microcosmos of affection & intimacy, blurs our faces and identities to the dominant culture’s eye. Holding the monopoly of imagetic production and distribution for centuries, white male image makers abused their storytelling privileges to compose black female toy-characters, drafted to perform accessory functionalities to male protagonists’ households, enterprises and egos. The list of exemples is endless. Let’s then pick the Oscar winner representation of Euridices, in Camus’ Black Orpheus [7] — a classic by all means! What’s that black muse if not the stereotype of a hysteric chick in need of strong masculine arms, to rescue and justify her? One might object that Camus was faithful to the myth, but that too emphasizes the shallow trait of Orpheus’ anima. How about Cacá Diegues’ Xica da Silva [8] — which I’ll always love because of Zezeh Motta’s kick ass performance, in spite of her playing a protagonist that, for Beatriz Nascimento, was “an abnormal being (…) uncapable of thought, unable to elaborate any self claim” [9]. In fact, the last mention to Diegues’ lead role in this film, through the mouth of a young man that Xica pursues in her restless urge to fornicate, was, quote: “You act like a monkey!” [10]. No mainstream critic that I know of rose against it in Brazil. Proper criticism by black women intellectuals, such as Nascimento’s, is still ignored. Although Diegues is a kind old man, with a sincere will to “help” black women to be seen, his liberty to talk widely about us, on a stage where we’ve not been welcomed to debate, is very hurtful. It’s as if we only existed as far as a white speaker (usually male) would possess and shape his imagetic synthesis of our identities up. That’s got something to do with the root of the Brazilian idiomatic expression: “I want my neggress!”, referring to a runner up’s “right” to another round in a dispute. An expression that I’ve heard employed only by, and among, men. Fortunately, this white world’s failure to acknowledge and, furthermore, relate to our Humanity, doesn’t stop us from being. And on we go; not-their-negresses, not ever.
The dehumanization, carried about by overlapping structures of racism & misogyny, blurs our faces and identities to the dominant culture’s eye
The will to “be understood by” or “merged into” this hegemonic Western society, that has no clue of what a black woman’s soul is all about, and does not want to think outside their profit oriented box — could be, perhaps, a positive surviving strategy for an oppressed minority population. For many rezones, such presumed commonsese notion, that all groups must gladly fit in these weird social standards (through the so called “globalization”), doesn’t quite apply to the case of black women in Brazil. Here, the high number of African-Brazilians individuals, and the formative roles played by black women toward kids and youths of every social stratum, added to the gender and race barriers that keep these same negro females segregated from Brazil’s wealth and power — compose a noneothersome social map. Raising bold questions around the concept of “being equal to”, or “integrated in” a establishment that’s been feeding on our blood for over 500 years, Beatriz Nascimento clarifies [11]:
Accepted by whom? What for? What changes if you’re accepted? What does being equal mean? Equal to whom? Is it even possible? What to be equal for?
African-Brazilians are above 50% of our population, and women are also a numeric majority. Historically, black women have been supportive unpaid labor, to landlords, landladies, brothers, lovers and husbands too. Popular songs are plenty of explicit examples of such (public and private) traditions. Objectification and servitude of black women are so natural that, in the 2010 decade, there were many cases of top fashion brands printing enslaved black women’s images on their clothing [12]. Once a dark skinned female bypasses the racial/gender screens she’s segregated through, she will earn a laughable fraction of the average white male’s compensation for similar positions. If so. In the arts, and film, offerings of unpaid (or extremely underpaid) work to black women creators, AKA: “opportunity”, “visibility” or “empowerment” — remains a constant lure behind propositions of collaboration. That may come from black or white folks, men or women, rich or poor, left or right wingers. But it’s more commonplace coming from men, regardless of their ethnicity.
Such interactions rely on a presumption that took me over 20 years, of vain career development efforts, to formulate: tag along a white artist’s entourage, and access his/hers circle of successful white people, is the greatest honor that a black woman artist may expect in her “professional” trajectory. Attempts to appropriate moral and patrimonial rights of black women artists’ production, belong in the same pack. In this context, marriage and loving connections (romantic or just friendly) with a white man or woman diminishes the ability of the “integrated” black woman to do the math and react. No open talks of it, but such an idea is there, echoed in prejudicial jokes & gossips, as it’s reflected on the omnipresent reality of exclusion. In my 32 year career, white American and European women displayed similar behavior toward me, almost as often as men have. To such people — the wealthier, most educated and politically correct in special — my intellectual & creative uniqueness was not something they should fairly pay for, publicly support or, at least, respect. Near these racists, it felt as if my face had been erased, for my existence was subjected to whatever they could earn with the (unpaid) makings of my hands/spirit.
The above image, extracted from my art piece Fotoperformance-políptico 02 [2016–22][13] stresses consequences of such discovery. It’s still in progress, for I’ve no idea of how will I get the resources to print and expose this work. I won’t say more about this because, being my own creation, any description I’d make of it would implicate my creative process, exceeding the scope of the present writing. I’ll only add that this first visual art series of mine was a deflect from my film making activity. I’d realized I had to give up Cinema, after too many lost battles to have the first feature filme funded. Without film, I had to find another way to express myself. Having no hand for painting, like the talented Maria Auxiliadora and Yara Ligiéro, I chose photo performance as my new artistic language. In my trajectory, group dynamics did not offer an alternative to my career development [14]. Interracial collectives of arts and humanities tended to favor white “buddies” thoughts and expressions, while black people’s associations for similar ends would focus on men’s projects.
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In this sense, I’m more at home to share these reflections on my experiences under propositions by Beatriz Nascimento (1942–1995), an African-Brazilian Historiographer who, alike and contemporaneously to bell hooks’, raised her discussions on the ‘lovelessness’ in negro women’s lives as a core subject for cultural/social sciences in Brazil. Among the recent academic works on this matter, I’d highlight a PhD thesis in Sociology which presents the conclusion that “white supremacy operates in Brazilian society (…) as a centripetal force driving a flux of affection toward white people”, being opposed by the ideas of black women’s super-sexuality and anti-racist discourses [15]. Beatriz gave her work a South-South orientation, visiting Angola to research the roots of African-Brazilian history and social organizations. She didn’t get international recognition because she wrote in Portuguese. We met in Rio in 1988, in the attendance of a Candomblé Party [16], and developed a casual friendship until 1991, when my first marriage restrained my freedom. We lost contact in 1993, when I moved to New York. She died before I got back. Defining Brazilian racism as “an entanglement of subtleties”, she implies that, “in such a given context”
it is up to this woman to demystify the concept of Love, transforming it into a social and cultural dynamo (…), thus pursuing gender parity rather than that “equality of the (European) Enlightment”. Rejecting the fantasy of romantic submission, an engaged negro woman may rise (…) [17]
I remember some talks we had about this specific issue. Somehow, I went down this road without planing. To me, such loving engagement includes experiencing Love (as a woman, mother, friend, citizen…) like a daily gift, not as something that marriage, bloodline, religious or political affiliation could guarantee. My solitude, to create, study and think, is part of my freedom — never to be confused with a sour loneliness. Not being understood, accepted or integrated is part that too. To us, independent black female artists who own authorial productions, being seen as something that this white male oriented world can’t assign to its precooked tags & labels, is just part of who we are. If there’s no word in your dictionary to explain what we communicate, let go of your habit to rationalize everything. If your galleries and academies pretend we don’t exist, we’ll always have Humanity’s hearts to make conversations with. We’ve made this far without your rezones. It’s rather cool being your rich intellectual other, with identities, meanings and imagery of our own.
1- in hooks, bell: Outlaw culture — resisting representations, chapter 20: Love as the practice of freedom_ Ed Routledge, London, 2006
2- In a wikipedia definition “Gaslighting is a colloquialism, loosely defined as making someone question their own reality.” That same entry explains that, generally, this dynamic is only possible in situations such as “unequal power relationships.” It also informs that the term derives from Hitchcock’s film Gaslight 1944, “which’s a story about a husband who uses trickery to convince his wife that she is mentally unwell in order to steal from her.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
3- “Favela” is the Brazilia Portuguese name for ‘slum’, or ‘shanty town’ .
4- Thompson, Robert Farris. An aesthethics of the cool_Source: African Arts, Vol. 7, №1 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 40–43+64–67+89–91_Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center_Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3334749
5- FU-KIAU, K.K. Bunseki. Ntanga-tandu-kola: The Bantu-Kongo Concept of Time. In: ADJAYE, Joseph K.(ed.). Time in the Black Experience. Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1994.
6- Haile Gerima shared this information with the audience during his master class held during the XIth Encontro de Cinema Negro Zozimo Bulbul, in Rio de Janeiro, 2018
7- Black Orpheus 1959, film by Marcel Camus https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053146/
8- Xica da Silva 1976, film by Cacá Diegues https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078512/
9- in RATTS, Alex_Eu sou atlântica — sobre a trajetória de vida de Beatriz Nascimento, pg 75_Inst. Kwanza / Imprensa Oficial SP_ São Paulo 2007
10- The literal translation of the line I quote here would be “You seem like a monkey!” But the context in the scene refers more to Xica’s behavior than to her physical appearance. That’s why I translated it: “You act like a monkey!”
11- in RATTS, Alex_Eu sou atlântica — sobre a trajetória de vida de Beatriz Nascimento, pg 44_Inst. Kwanza / Imprensa Oficial SP_ São Paulo 2007
12- The most outrageous case was the Summer 2012 collection of Adriana Degreas, which displayed large prints of Slave Anastacia (religious figure for some African-Brazilian cults) wearing a torture gad; other cases included prints of historic engravings of enslaved black women on T-shirts by griffe Maria Filó, in 2016; and the 50th birthday party of Donata Meirelles, former Director of Vogue Brasil magazine, in 2019, where guests were served by black women dressed as XIXth century domestic slaves.
13- The photoperformance session was in 2016, during the production of my late short fiction Missing [2017], which belongs in the same visual art series. But the composition of the multiple-image pieces has been a slow process.
14- I made attempts to belong in various groups, during the 1980’s and 90’s. In 2003/04, with Abdias Nascimento, I lead the Cinema noir manifesto (manifesto Cinema de preto) which gathered black Scholars, Artists & Technitians, but didn’t become an actual group.
15- PEREIRA, Bruna Cristina Jaquetto. Dengos e zangas das mulheres-moringa: vivências afetivo-sexuais de mulheres negras. 2019. 306 f. Thesis (Sociology PhD) — Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, 2019.
16- “Candomblé” is a generic name for a specific kind of African-Brazilian cult
17- in RATTS, Alex_Eu sou atlântica — sobre a trajetória de vida de Beatriz Nascimento, pg 76_Inst. Kwanza / Imprensa Oficial SP_ São Paulo 2007
