We need to speak of another art history in schools, one capable of accounting for our Indigenous foundations, such as Marajoara and Tapajônica ceramics. This is not a restorative vision, a search for and celebration of our supposed origins, but an expansion of the cultural spectrum, capable of absorbing a multiple, plural aesthetic legacy that does not disregard what belongs to us culturally.
I visited the potters’ workshops in Icoaraci, an industrial district of Belém, in Pará. They produce ceramics in the Marajoara and Tapajônica traditions, a millennia-old culture inherited from peoples who disappeared long ago.
The Marajoara lived in the Amazon region of Marajó Island from 1000 BCE to 1300 CE, and at its peak this settlement reached 100,000 inhabitants. The reasons for their disappearance are unknown, but ceramic production is estimated to date back to at least 1500 BCE.
Among the best-known pieces are funerary urns, or igaçabas, intended to hold the bones of the dead and richly decorated with animal figures such as snakes, caimans, owls, king vultures and scorpions.
Tapajônica culture comes from the Lower Amazon, and ceramic production dates back to 6500 BCE, according to records found in the Santarém region, on the banks of the Ituqui River. One of the most complex social organizations was that of the Tapajó people, who inhabited the region between the 10th and 17th centuries.
In Icoaraci, local craftspeople work to disseminate this knowledge and help preserve it. One of the best known, Mr. Anísio, says he takes refresher courses at the Goeldi Museum, and many of them have clients abroad despite the lack of infrastructure and state support.
Under extraordinarily precarious conditions, everything is made in these workshops, from tools to kilns, with an incredible capacity for reinvention and appropriation. A Bic pen and a clip become a spatula. A pencil and a piece of wood become a compass.
The results are dazzling pieces that confront us with another art history and another understanding of design.
The pieces’ predominant zoomorphism; the geometric patterns forming mosaics and designs that verge on optical illusions, entirely distinct from traditions shaped by a Renaissance gaze; the phallic forms and eroticism present in countless utensils and deities, so far removed from the canons of European art, with its languid Madonnas and sexless angels.
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All of this introduces a repertoire we should learn in schools… from elementary education to specialized institutions such as universities.
This is not a restorative vision — one that has so often served the worst authoritarian and nationalist agendas — of searching for and celebrating our supposed origins. It is another strand of art history that broadens the cultural spectrum beyond European foundations, without dismissing them, but with the capacity to absorb a multiple, plural aesthetic legacy that does not disregard what belongs to us culturally.
Transcript of Giselle Beiguelman’s Ouvir Imagens column, broadcast every Monday at 8 a.m. on Rádio USP (93.7).
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