LGBT

It was a regular Sunday in October in São Paulo – sunny and chilly. My original plan was to walk towards Paulista Avenue – one of the city’s main thoroughfares – to see the exhibition ‘Afro Atlantic Histories’ at MASP (the São Paulo Art Museum), which was closing that day. The survey – included 450 works by 214 artists from Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe, and spanned five centuries – promised to weave together multiple strands of Afro-Atlantic visual culture and provide a starting point for discussing colonial legacies and identity politics. Brazil was one of the last major countries in the world to abolish slavery and has the largest African-descendent population in the planet – it’s about time these pressing issues appear in art programmes. On my way to the show, I bumped into a demonstration in support Jair Bolsonaro – the far-right politician who was, after this writing, elected President by a wide-margin – that stretched for a few blocks of the avenue’s extension. Speakers, placed in front of the museum, amplified his delusional and repulsive speech and blasted it toward anyone entering MASP. I suspect this was deliberate. - 这是十月Paulo的一个晴朗的星期日，阳光明媚，寒冷刺骨。我最初的计划是步行到保利斯塔大街——这个城市的主要通道之一——去看那天即将关闭的MASP（圣保罗艺术博物馆）的“非洲大西洋历史”展览。这项调查包括了来自非洲、美洲、加勒比和欧洲的214位艺术家创作的450幅作品，跨越了五个世纪。调查承诺将把非洲-大西洋视觉文化的多条线交织在一起，为讨论殖民遗产和身份政治提供一个起点。巴西是世界上最后一个废除奴隶制的主要国家之一，也是这个星球上非洲后裔人口最多的国家之一——这些紧迫的问题应该出现在艺术节目中了。在我去演出的路上，我碰巧遇到了支持Jair Bolsonaro的示威游行，Jair Bolsonaro是极右派政治家，在写完这篇文章后，他以很大的优势当选总统。站在博物馆前面的发言者放大了他的妄想和令人反感的演讲，并向任何进入MASP的人猛烈抨击。我怀疑这是故意的。