Amplifying syncretism: Antonio Obá’s dialectical conception of Brazil

Abstract

Antonio Obá (b.1983) was born and grew up in Ceilândia, a dormitory town thirty kilometres outside of Brazil’s capital, Brasilia. Though this may not seem like an especially significant biographical detail in considering Obá’s work – other writers, for example, have focused on the artist’s race and devout Catholic upbringing­ – I argue that this foundational fact of Obá’s upbringing and experience is more telling than first impressions suggest. This paper posits Brasilia and Ceilândia as stand-ins for a more general dynamic that structures Brazilian identity and nationhood. That violent and generative dynamic – which occurs between a range of other symbolic pairs of concepts, such as black and white, rich and poor, formal and informal, progress and stasis, sacred and profane, European and African, and so on – is Obá’s focus, thus “syncretism” emerges as an important term within his practice. The paper offers readings of two of Obá’s performances – Atos da transfiguração –  desaparição ou receita de como fazer um santo (2015) and Malungo: Rite for a Black Mass (2016) – as well as an accompanying installation, Malungo (2019), as examples of the syncretic dynamic or dialectic that runs through much of Obá’s work.