Keywords
Diasporic Imaginary
Cultural Appropriation
Exile imagination
Carnivalesque
How to Cite
Abstract
Between the 1940s and 1960s, artists Dimitri Ismailovitch and Maria Margarida Soutello, both European immigrants to Brazil, produced together a series of works representing black figures or dealing with themes related to Afro-Brazilian identity. The present article examines that output and discusses its early reception, with the objective of understanding how it was viewed in the cultural context of that period. Far from qualifying their work as mere cultural appropriation, it is discussed here in terms of the concept of ‘diasporic imagination’. The central argument is that the artists’ experience of dislocation and double consciousness, characteristic of exile, channeled their gaze upon blackness towards the reinvention of identities through strategies of masquerade and mysticism. The carnivalesque aspect of Brazilian culture made it possible for that imaginary construct to prosper, constituting a social reality in its own right.
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Copyright (c) 2022 Rafael Cardoso
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