Cerâmica Paulista

It is common to read in history books about an alleged strategic alliance between a part of the Tupiniquim people and the Portuguese settlers in the conquering project of the territory that constitutes the São Paulo state today. Not far from here, the Monumento às Bandeiras [Monument to the Bandeiras] symbolizes this union of different identities in a project to “explore” the country. But what the history books do not tell – and the granite blocks do not represent – are how colonial violence has linked over the years rhetorical strategies and institutional devices to repress Indigenous cultural traces in what we understand as a São Paulo culture. There is a whole structure, from public monuments to school classes and popular stories, which portrays our identity while erasing this memory.

There are forces, however, always working in the opposite direction. Combining historical accuracy, archaeological investigation, and memory restoration, Marianne Sallum and Francisco Silva Noelli’s recent research has contributed to overcoming at least one of the many gaps racism against Indigenous peoples created. These studies show how the so-called Cerâmica Paulista [Ceramics from São Paulo], made since the sixteenth century until today, is the result of Tupiniquim women’s original creation, who used a process of exchanging techniques, repertoires, and models with the Portuguese colonizers, as a tactic for identity preservation. Although, at first sight, the Cerâmica Paulista is very different from the precolonial Tupiniquim production, Sallum and Noelli’s in-depth investigation reveals how the Tupiniquim women embedded their culture in the pottery-making process, from the raw material selection, the ceramic paste composition, the acordelado technique, and the process duration to the ceramic surface treatment. That is an example of cultural persistence.

Displaying some Cerâmica Paulista items is a way to recognize this land’s ancestry – a land never ceded to the Portuguese. It is also a way of showing the importance of memory revitalization to defy the narratives that justify the ongoing processes of dispossession, destruction, and exploitation. But it is also a reminder that things are more complex than they seem and that, often, they bear the seeds to subvert their own meaning. Together with the works gathered around them, these ceramics talk about resilience and persistency, thus referring us back to the elements of the Museu Nacional at the beginning of the visit to the Bienal. In a show that aims at expanding the way an artwork is understood, the Cerâmica Paulista history helps to complexify our perception of the present. And perhaps to understand differently the works we see again when we walk through the exhibition in the opposite direction.