"Abeiramento": performance e descolonização no Brasil contemporâneo

Abstract

This article is a two-front work merging into a methodological bricolage. While – ethnographically speaking – I narrate my search for my own poetics through a persistent turn towards decoloniality, I seek to verify by theoretical discussion, my perceptions of what we understand as “art” in contemporary times. The main aim is to create, identify, promote, provoke, appropriate, and revise artistic concepts that can interconnect creative borders disjointed by colonialism to reveal the contradictions of the West. Having the 1960s and 1970s as main references to this discussion – due to its aspects of “superanthropophagy” (as stated by Helio Oiticica) – I propose links between the present moment and a decolonizing perspective of such era. For this intent, I theoretically analyze the gaps existent between the comprehension of the larger audience on these artistic productions and what we, as scholars, understand as contemporary art. This analysis aims to deconstruct westernizing notions of art to “border” territories fragmented by colonialism. Lastly, I also take part in actual decolonizing endeavors by joining the art collective nMUnDO which recently held its 11th performance festival Durante (2021). The collective’s enterprises, artistic proposals, artists, and scholars whose were with me in this process is based on the “bordering” concept I carry out in this article.