Manifestações
"Embodiment" / performance
Installation indoor / outdoor: turf, stainless steel, costume, ceramics (white body)
Costume: cotton
Braunschweig, Germany
2020
Manifestações from the Portuguese "Manifestação", plural "Manifestações", translated into German means:
Demonstration, expression, revelation, manifestation, expression, expression, rally, expression, appearance, mass demonstration, event.
I invited people from the Brazilian community in Germany to realize this project. I was born in Brazil myself and lived there for 22 years. I've been in Germany for 15 years and, like all my guests, have specific reasons to be here. We all tell different stories about it, but what unites us is that we are all children of colonialism. Colonialism brought us to Europe. We are now part of this society like many other migrants, but we are seldom taken seriously, heard and seen. Politics rarely deals with our concerns. We are like ghosts in this society.
The space is given to celebrate our migrant bodies, to mark the ground with our steps, to feel our feelings, to strengthen us, to make ourselves audible, to determine our existence, so as not to forget our past to heal our wounds, to be here in the present, to tell our stories, to have dreams, to be allowed to go on living.
We are brought together by the music that we learned from our ancestors and that is our heritage. Music from different times and by different people, songs and chants of different origins, with different texts and languages, music that makes us easier but also depresses us. Music that makes us feel like we're alive.
Our manifestation is our singing, our joy, our existence, our music, our dancing, our breathing, our existence, our crying, our laughing. Those who watch and listen to us are privileged. Our bodies and spirits have the right to be and stay here.
This tent is made of cotton. Crocheted by my mother who lives in Brazil. It gives us warmth and security. This material is beautiful and has so many good properties, but its mass production is responsible for many centuries of pain. Inside the tent it can get unbearable. Some had to pull themselves together so as not to give up and break off. But as soon as all the pain is over, the wind comes through the almost transparent fabric that was woven in Germany as if nothing had happened.
My story, the composition of the tent and the personal experience of each participant dictate how we will move. The embodiment of this being happens depending on our own existence.
I dress all contributors. No other person is allowed into the room until we are finished. Only we are there. It's quiet and calm. Finally a space for us, where we determine everything, where we feel respect and can be among ourselves. Only when everyone is dressed and ready can we open the space to other observers: inside. We are the tent, a community: we carry ourselves, we protect each other, we share the moment, all connected, together as one.
Now we are loud. We sing, play and dance. We are among ourselves.
Our “Manifestação” lasts as long as it wants!
Guardians accompany us. They are objects made of a ceramic called "White Body". You can be there and watch and listen to our current ritual. But they cannot express themselves, say nothing, are mute. They are casts of everyday objects that I found and selected in Germany and Mexico because I was of the opinion that these beautiful shapes should be archived. Whoever should find them again in a new future, when we no longer exist, can try to patch our stories together again. The descendants can try to guess what happened when we were still there. You can try to reconstruct or interpret history. But they won't make it because only we tell our stories.
