This self-portrait was inspired by the lithography of Carlota Joaquina of Spain as Princess of Brazil. My piece was made to scale to the original Marques de Aguilar artwork. I made the background upside down, aiming to create an unsettling character in the whole image. At first look, this feature almost goes unnoticed, as it was made quite delicately. This attempts to demonstrate that, at first sight, some things can be lost if they are not given the proper analysis and thought towards them. Therefore, the aim is to demonstrate that something is ‘wrong’ and needs to be untangled. Around my neck, we see Yoruba (Umbanda) and Indigenous traditional bead neckless, a pearl neckless and a rosary. All those different cultural elements are attempting to coexist in the same space, despite all the problems regarding how those various identities came together in the first place. The compass pointing to the South is again used in this drawing, and the crown seen in the original lithography is replaced by a traditional indigenous headdress. Finally, the figures were changed, and instead, I depict a confrontation between indigenous and Portuguese invaders at the moment of their arrival on the Brazilian shore. A confrontation that sadly never really occurred. In essence, this work talks about the very clear separation that exists between the ideas of “us” and “them” and how identities are chameleonic, never-fixed, and difficult to be conceived.

At the bottom of the drawing, you see the result of a DNA test that I took back in December 2017, and the results are as follows: Indigenous Amazonian (0.8%), Kenyan (1.0%), Sierra Leonean (1.1%), Maasai (1.5%), Italian (1.5%), West African (2.8%), Middle Eastern (3.1%), Ashkenazi Jewish (3.6%), Central America (4.7%), North and West European (23.2%) and Iberian (56.7%).

The variety of regions shown in the result gives a sense of the complexity of the Brazilian identity and our difficulty in understanding our own heritage.

Crise de Identidade || 32.3 x 22.2 cm || Ink on paper || 2018