Visual artist and curator Emanoel Araujo is influenced by modernism and African and Afro-Brazilian cultures, as can be seen by the constructivist geometrical abstraction and frequent use of colors from the Candomblé religion and Pan-Africanism. After taking part in the 2nd Festac (1977) in Lagos, Nigeria, when he first travelled to Africa, Araujo has been using African forms more intensely in his creative process. O navio consists of a geometrical and symmetrical wood structure, painted black, with cross-sectional shapes, in a direct reference to slave ship designs. The rhombus at the center has a metal chain linked to a shackle. Over that surface, Araujo distributed wood sculptures representing human forms, carved after the traditional Yoruba sculpting technique, in reference to abolitionist pamphlets and the enslaved bodies piled up inside ship holds. The general aspect of the work also resembles conventional African sculptures and there is a formal resemblance to some human forms sculpted in wood by the Bambara culture, even though their proportions here are gigantic.
— Tomás Toledo, 2018
