The Pretos Novos Research and Memory Institute (IPN), recognized as Cultural Heritage of the City of Rio de Janeiro, celebrates on the 10th the 250th anniversary of the archaeological site of the Pretos Novos Cemetery, one of the most important traces of the arrival of enslaved Africans in Brazil, which operated between 1774 and 1830, and also the 19 years of existence of the IPN itself. The exposure Will it be Benedito?by visual artist Fátima Farkas, opens the commemorative program of the two anniversaries, curated by Mauro Trindade.
IPN Communications Coordinator, Alexandre Nadai, informed the Brazil Agency that on the 10th there will also be the launch of three books, in addition to the Samba event at the Museum and a tasting of Afro-Brazilian gastronomy, with Tia Mara.
Actions to celebrate the two anniversaries, however, take place throughout the year. “There are more than a thousand free historical circuits of territory with African heritage and more than 43 online workshops, also free, with an Afro-centered theme”, informed Nadai.
One of the circuits, for example, focuses on quilombolas and terreiro people, while one of the workshops is dedicated to anti-racist education for teachers. The IPN serves public schools in the state.
Four more exhibitions are planned, the first being by Isabelle Mesquita. The remaining three are defining the curatorship, informed Alexandre Nadai.
Discovery
The Pretos Novos Cemetery was discovered in 1996 and its soil is listed. There, between 20,000 and 30,000 new blacks were buried, as the slaves who died after the ships entered Guanabara Bay or immediately after disembarking, before being sold, were buried. It operated from 1772 to 1830, in Valongo, a strip of Rio’s coast that ran from Prainha to Gamboa, after having operated in Largo de Santa Rita, close to the newly arrived slave market.
According to Alexandre Nadai, the Valongo Complex moved more than 1 million people, of which around 400,000 were women, treated as merchandise and, consequently, as reproducers. They were all raped, Nadai said.
The cemetery was discovered in 1996, by the couple Merced and Petruccio Guimarães dos Anjos, when they bought the house where the institute operates and began renovating the property. Then, during excavations, they found human bones that confirmed that the site was a cemetery for black Africans.
The first complete bones were found in the Cemitério dos Pretos Novos after seven months of excavations. The excavations took place in a 2 square meter area of one of the cemetery’s observation pits. Coordinated by archaeologist Reinaldo Tavares, from the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the work identified that the skeleton belonged to a young woman, who died at around 20 years of age, at the beginning of the 19th century. found in the Cemitério dos Pretos Novos, it was named after Josefina Bakhita, honoring the first African saint of the Catholic church.
Exhibition
The exposure Will it be Benedito?, by Fátima Farkas, brings together around 32 paintings, which bring to light important characters from racial struggles, many of whom have been forgotten due to their racist and patriarchal heritage. Fátima uses her expressive painting to reconstruct memory, using photographic portraits of black people. One of them is Benedito Caravelas (1805-1885), also known as Benedito Meia-Légua, leader of quilombola groups that freed slaves in the Northeast and Espírito Santo. The artist is inspired by old photographs to bring these historical characters to life, such as those of Alberto Henschel, a German-Brazilian photographer and one of the most important photographers of the second half of the 19th century, working in Brazil. Considered an excellent portraitist, he received the title of Photographer of the Imperial Household. In addition to photographing Emperor Dom Pedro II and his family, Henschel made photographic records of free black people and slaves who lived in the country.
Other portraits include figures such as João Cândido Felisberto, leader of the Revolta da Chibata; the writer and abolitionist Luiz Gama; Nzinga (queen of Ndongo and Matamba); and the award-winning Burkinabé architect Diébédo Francis Kéré. Fátima Farkas also denounces historical erasure by replacing faces with vegetation or a white void, representing the disappearance of bodies and lives.
The exhibition’s curator, Mauro Trindade, highlighted that the artist, in addition to revealing the process of erasing people, proposes, at the same time, a re-elaboration of memory through the appropriation of photographic portraits of black people who recreate great characters from the past and the gift. Will it be Benedito? It can be visited at the Instituto Pretos Novos until July 20, from Tuesday to Friday, from 10am to 4pm and, on Saturdays, from 10am to 1pm.