Through the representation of typically Brazilian characters, Tarsila often placed herself in an exoticizing position when depicting local populations, a result of the quest by the national artistic elites for inclusion within Western modernism. In the painting Workers, we see a black face in the foreground, whose facial lines express resignation and sadness. His gaze is directed toward emptiness, and his closed, tensed lips confirm this feeling. In the background, the workers portrayed are notably black, painted in different shades. They are panning in a river, standing in its flow. The landscape of the mountains with workers mining in harsh conditions recalls a scene of slavery, and it is possible to interpret the artist’s choice to represent such a scene in 1938 as her pointing to the permanence of social structures rooted in slavery in Brazil. The men’s faces in the background are not visible; however, Tarsila’s representation of these figures on a triangular axis that cuts across the canvas expands through the perspective and suggests a rhythm, a sequence, potentialized by the movement of the workers’ gold panning, which, like social structures, repeats itself. In this sense, the facial expression of the first figure distances itself from the individual, becoming an integral part of the collective dynamics of exploitation.
— Artur Santoro, curatorship intern, MASP, 2019
