“My skin is language
And the reading is all yours, oh
…
Despite of so many denials, so much pain invading us
We are the city’s joy
Despite so many denials, so many delinquency
We are the city’s joy

The city’s joy – Virgínia Rodrigues and Lazzo Matumbi

Indomitable Presences presents the materialization of countercolonial imageries in several mediums. Assembled by the digital quilombo AfrontArt, the exhibit restates the commitment to promote and develop black and indigenous perspectives in contemporaneous Brazilian visual arts scene.

The shared curatorship process demanded from us the capacity to dream during the unexpected. We embraced the challenge to become acquainted with our disagreements and transformed them into creative fictions, we planted stubbornness and insisted on the joy of making the impossible happen and refused to serve simple entertainment. We dismissed names, identity labels and grasped the energy of transformation. Our research was the basis of what we present in the exhibit, but we need to emphasize the importance of the curatorship process shaped and refined in each new encounter with the artists. This was how we found the image of a forest that navigates through time, built by dark skin people.