In 2018 , a year in which MASP is focusing attention on Afro‑Atlantic histories, involving flows and reflows between Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas, the museum is presenting an exhibition on the work of Emanoel Araujo (Santo Amaro da Purificação, Bahia, 1940). This is the artist’s second solo show at the museum; the first one was held in 1981, in this same gallery, also occupying the ground‑level plaza under the free span.
This is not a retrospective show, nor is it organized chronologically. The works presented include forty sculptures and woodcuts, grouped in thematic segments—Geometries, Masks, Orishas and Ships—as well as a selection of thirty posters. They reveal the artist’s interests, centered on modernist Brazilian and European traditions such as geometric abstraction, as well as on the popular culture of Bahia. Araujo’s production reflects his African origins: the West African Nago and Yoruba ancestry.
The section dedicated to geometry features woodcuts and wooden sculptures, made mostly in the 1970s, when the artist developed abstract constructive compositions. The graphic structures and colors of these works dialogue with African art, including the patterns of traditional fabrics (such as Kente cloth from Ghana) and the colors of pan‑Africanism (black, red and green). A turning point in Araujo’s career was his participation in the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), in 1977, in Lagos, Nigeria. After that trip to Africa, the artist began to bring in more direct references to African culture in his formal composition, thematic elements and artwork titles. This more direct strategy is evident in the series of masks and sculptures of orishas from the Afro‑Brazilian religion of Candomblé. In the masks, Araujo develops the African themes with colors and shapes that recall these ritualistic objects. In the sculptures dedicated to the orishas of Candomblé, the artist includes symbols pertaining to these entities and refers to them in the titles, such as Eshu, Shango, Oxalá, Iemanjá, Ogun and Oshosi.
In the ships section, Araujo conveys the violence of the slave trade by which Africans were forcefully removed from their continent to toil as slaves in the European colonies of the Americas and the Caribbean. Brazil received the largest number of enslaved Africans and has the disgraceful distinction of being the last nation of the Americas to abolish slavery. This came about only in 1888, with the Golden Law—which 130 th anniversary falls this year.
Brazil is a country profoundly marked by slavery, but also by the extraordinary presence of African culture. It is in this wider context that we should understand the work of Emanoel Araujo, which becomes fundamental in a year dedicated to the Afro‑Atlantic histories at MASP . Besides its aesthetic research, the artist’s works invite the observer to reflect on Brazilian society—which is still violent, racist, unequal and unjust.
CURATED BY Tomás Toledo, Curator, MASP.
