(Re)imaginando histórias de mulheres negras brasileiras do século XX a partir da obra “Álbum de Desesquecimentos”

Abstract

Starting from the interpellations about the ways in which we think the past in the present, in view of the technological advances that cut across contemporaneity, we then reflect on the practices of remembrance, especially from the perspective of the perception of the pasts of Black Brazilian women. To make this analysis possible, we use the work "Álbum de Desesquecimentos" [Album of Unforgettings] (2023) by the Bahian artist Mayara Ferrão, who, through photographs developed by Generative Artificial Intelligence, creates new possibilities of existences for female bodies and sexual dissidents in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, speculating on their moments of humanity, rest, and affectivity. The objective is to work with two photographs from this work in comparison to a real image, registered by the immigrant photographer Vincenzo Pastore in 1910 in the city of São Paulo. Therefore, the research of Florestan Fernandes, Lélia Gonzalez, and Lilia Schwarcz is mobilized to seek to understand how the social, cultural, economic, and racial issues of the country actually took place during this temporality portrayed by Ferrão. Due to the issues that permeate the themes of gender, sexuality, and representativeness, we observe the studies of Saidiya Hartman, Audre Lorde, and Patricia Hill Collins. With the objective of thinking about these (re)constructions of the multiple experiences of these subjects in the post-abolition period, contradicting the official archives that mostly conditioned their bodies to spaces of exclusion and invisibility, and naturalized their association with servitude.