The Progress of the Nations

Rosana Paulino’s art focuses on social, ethnic, and gender issues with particular emphasis on the place of Black women in Brazilian society. Her works engage archival practices (she works with images from her personal and family archive, but also from institutional archives) from a theoretical and visual perspective informed by a critique of the multiple forms of violence wreaked by racism and the legacy of slavery. In her work, she crosses her personal experience as a woman born to an Afro-Brazilian family and the history of her country. "O amor pela ciência" and "O progresso das nações" [Progress of Nations] form part of her Atlântico Vermelho [Red Atlantic] project; the title evokes the image of the sea tinted by the blood of slaves brought over to Brazil from Africa. These textile works make use of the sewn stitches, which the artist understands as sutures. “When I put these sutures in plain sight, I expose what Brazilian society hid for so long: discussion of racial prejudice.” With layers of translucent images, Paulino also makes reference to the eugenic policies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that tried to “whiten” the Black population, which was seen as inferior.