Previously located in the Campos Elíseos neighborhood, the Museu das Favelas reopened all its exhibitions this week, at a new address. The museum is now located in the Pateo do Collegio region, in the historic center of São Paulo.
In this revival, four exhibitions occupy the immense halls of an old mansion. The main exhibition is About Experiences, which seeks to rescue the historical connections of the favelas and introduce visitors to the countless expressions of the people who build their lives in these communities.
Also part of the program are the exhibitions Marvel – The Power is Ours, which shares with the public a reinterpretation of heroes, now members of minority groups, and the itinerant Favela em Fluxo, which is made up of works by 22 artists from these communities and disembarks in São Paulo after visiting Recife, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro.
For Oswaldo Faustino, member of the Favela em Fluxo curatorial group, among the qualities that stand out in the selection of works for the exhibition, the most widespread of all was equalizing the contributions of the curator to those of employees in the educational sector.
The research sector also participated in the decisions. Faustino explains that it was essential to validate the perceptions of those who are symbolically behind the scenes, but, in reality, are the front line, as they serve visitors and guide them through the exhibition.
When you walk through the rooms where the works are on display, you notice a multiplicity of languages. There are oil paintings, collages, textile art and videos that use generative intelligence. The texts that anticipate some of the intentions with which the works are imbued sometimes summarize, in a few words, how to approach them.
Deusa da Espreita is what artist Lua Barral calls the painting she did this year in Recife. In a dark booth, a video is shown of transvestites looking into the background of the camera lens, reaffirming who they are. After all, transvestite is a term used to highlight the capsule that becomes the body of someone who is always oppressed, as is the case with transvestites. Being a favela means being doubly strong. And this is how one of the transvestites celebrates, holding a cake with a number 2 candle, the anniversary of her gender transition process.
The favela is not one, there are several, declare the artists and museum staff. Black, indigenous and riverside people; stilts, vertical and yet precarious houses, this all belongs to his universe.
Another work that draws attention practically has a second frame for the collage in the center, made with profiled razor blades. The political sense continues when the visitor stops to pay attention to the music, which then stops being just an undefined background. It’s the throating of funk artists Pétala Lopes, MC Mano Feu and Luiza Fazio, in the Linguadinha video on XXT, which can be embarrassing for the most modest or conservative.
One of the rooms houses an alley with photos. Faustino says that the first thing that occurred to him, when he found out that the exhibition would have this element, was the reference to a suffocating place. “There, a trans woman in our group turned around and said, ‘But it can also be liberating.’ I said: ‘How liberating? She replied: ‘When I was little, I was in the favela, with my aunt, I jumped out of the bedroom window and fell into the alley. I would leave the alley and suddenly find free space. So, the alley, for me, was the path to freedom’”, he says.
“I said: ‘Look, we are looking at the favela from the outside. And you’re giving me the inside look.’ I thought it was wonderful”, he adds.
The word “favela” is related to Morro da Favela, today called Morro da Providência, in Rio de Janeiro, and which was part of the context of the Canudos War. The etymology, that is, the origin of the term, is also remembered in the exhibition Sobre Vivências, in the form of the plant called faveleira, now structured with wood and an unusual material in its crown.
The idea came from a collective of artists. “The collective looks and says to me: ‘Let’s crochet the top of this tree. Then, it becomes a stylized tree. On the trunk, names related to our ancestries were made in pyrography. In other words, it has no thorns. And why doesn’t it have thorns? Because our ancestors already trimmed it. So, today, the favela, which was born as a lack, has become a power.”
Entry is free and the exhibitions at the Favelas Museum can be visited until February next year.
