Inhotim announces upcoming exhibitions featuring works by Isaac Julien, Arjan Martins, Laura Belém and Jaime Lauriano. In partnership with IPEAFRO, the Institute will also inaugurate the Second Act of Abdias Nascimento and the Black Art Museum. The show addresses the origins of the museum through the Teatro Experimental do Negro, an initiative by Nascimento.

Abdias Nascimento e o Museu de Arte Negra

Inhotim hosts a museum within its space and features, in a period spanning two years, the project conceived by Abdias Nascimento (1914–2011) in the early 1950s: the Black Art Museum. This project started on December 4, 2021 with the opening of the exhibition Primeiro Ato: Abdias Nascimento e o Museu de Arte Negra [First Act: Abdias Nascimento and the Black Art Museum]

This time, under the sign of Oxóssi, guardian of the forests and Orixá of the throne of knowledge, the Second Act of the project, entitled Dramas para negros e prólogo para brancos [Dramas for blacks and prologue for whites], covers a period marked by theater in Abdias Nascimento’s artistic and political development, and in the initial conception of the collection of the Black Art Museum, from 1941 to 1968—the year in which Nascimento set off on his exile in the United States and Nigeria.

Shown at the Mata Gallery, the show addresses the Teatro Experimental do Negro (Black Experimental Theater – TEN), an initiative from which the Black Art Museum was born. Created by Abdias Nascimento in 1944, in Rio de Janeiro, the TEN’s central purpose was for black people to conquer space in the performing arts.

The exhibition offers audiences documents on the trajectory of the Teatro Experimental do Negro, paintings by Nascimento and works by such artists as Anna Bella Geiger, Heitor dos Prazeres, Iara Rosa, José Heitor da Silva, Sebastião Januário, Octávio Araújo and Yêdamaria, who are part of the IPEAFRO – Black Art Museum collection, in a shared curatorship with Inhotim.

Looking for Langston: I Dream a World, de Isaac Julien

In a work that blends poetry and images, Isaac Julien draws on a lyrical exploration of the private world of the African-American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright and columnist Langston Hughes (1902–1967) and his fellow black artists and writers who shaped the Harlem Renaissance—a cultural movement based on African-American cultural expressions and which took place throughout the 1920s.Investigations on prominent figures of the 20th century, such as Hughes, is a constant concern in the work of Isaac Julien.

Looking for Langston is considered a foundational work in African American studies, and for the past 30 years it has been widely presented at North American universities, colleges and art schools.

Inhotim Biblioteca, with Jaime Lauriano

Marking the opening of the Inhotim Biblioteca [Inhotim Library] program, Jaime Lauriano showcases an occupation to activate the Institute’s library, establishing a direct dialogue with the Second Act of Abdias Nascimento and the Black Art Museum.

Inhotim Library will offer the public a collective, open space for reading based on a bibliographic, visual and sonic proposition devised by Jaime Lauriano, aimed at building a collection focused on Pan-Africanist thought.

The research conducted by Jaime Lauriano, a São Paulo-based artist who lives between São Paulo and Lisbon, seeks to bring to the surface historical traumas relegated to the past and to confined archives, in proposals for the collective revision and re-elaboration of History.

Novas Obras Externas, with Arjan Martins and Laura Belém

Inhotim’s new program, Novas Obras Externas, emerged from the institution’s desire to be a breathing place, in constant transformation, making the new additions the collection available to the public.

On the lake between the Mata and True Rouge Galleries, two rowing boats equipped with spotlights, lit up and facing one another, can be sighted. They are part of Enamorados [Enamored, 2004], a work by the artist Laura Belém, from Minas Gerais, shown for the first time in 2004 in the Pampulha lagoon, in the city of Belo Horizonte, and the following year at the 51st Venice Biennale.

Instalação de Birutas [Windsock Installation, 2021] uses elements common to the artist’s poetics, with concepts such as migrations and other displacements of bodies and presences between spaces of struggle and power, as well as diasporas and colonial movements that took place in Afro-Atlantic territories. Placed between the Marilá Dardot Gallery and Jorge Macchi’s Piscina [Swimming Pool, 2009], the work consists of devices intended to indicate the direction of the winds, merged with maritime flags and their international codes used to transmit messages between ships and ports.

The openings are part of Território Específico [Specific Territory], the research theme and axis that guides the Institute’s program in the biennium 2021–2022, aimed at fostering debates and reflections on the role of art in territories at the local and global levels.