Eder Santos | Barravento Novo: curadoria de Luiz Gustavo Carvalho

Eder Santos's work encourages us to remove our everyday lenses that make us observe an increasingly monochromatic world. It’s only by taking them off that we can perceive what is not seen. The cold technology of video is metamorphosed by his sensitive gaze and by an utterly nonlinear image editing process that achieves dizzying levels – a sort of barravento.¹

References to Brazilian cinematic production have been recurrent in the artist's production, and Barravento Novo [New Barravento] is the work of a multimedia pioneer in veneration of Cinema Novo. The video installation, created in collaboration with Japanese-American artist Bruce Yonemoto based on the like-titled film by Glauber Rocha, proposes a juxtaposition that confronts the past and present of not only Brazilian history, but also of filmmaking technologies. In the exhibition space, the scenes shot on 35mm film by the Bahian filmmaker are superimposed on the 4K digital images by the Minas Gerais artist. The worlds of Cota and Firmino, in their key roles from the 1962 film, are impressively merged in the mesmerizing performance by the protagonist of the 2017 video installation, Camila Pitanga, who simultaneously embodies both characters – another sort of barravento.²

Avoiding mimicry, Eder Santos closely follows Firmino's shout: the independence of Barravento Novo is evident in the masterful editing that accompanies the speech by Antônio Pitanga at the end of the film – a tribute to the first black lead actor in Brazilian cinema as well as to Glauber’s editing aesthetics – it resounds in the barravento³ that unifies the film’s soundscape. The détournement present in the video installation nonetheless preserves the aesthetics and narrative in Glauber Rocha's first feature-length film and underscores some debates and tensions inherent to the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement, which still remain relevant even in this third decade of the 21st century.

Just as the African cultural and religious heritage in Bahia goes far beyond the barravento in Glauber Rocha's work, the transatlantic thrust is also found in much of Eder Santos's artistic universe. After his Todos os Santos series (2016), in which religious syncretism is blended in images projected in small oratories, the video-sculpture Oxalá demands from us a kairotic time to unveil landscapes evoked by the placid flight of the orisha and the intermittent dance of feathers, inviting the viewer to an immersive experience within the exhibition space, in a sort of counterpoint to the cyclical and quickened rhythm of Shango that coexists in the gallery.

There is furthermore a close bond uniting the worlds of Glauber Rocha and Eder Santos. Both, "with cameras in their hands and ideas in their heads," are extremely engaged and critical in regard to the domesticated society, whose main motto is summarized in the words "work, consume and die." Portraying the violence and precariousness of the third world and reflecting on the deeper layers between the oppressor and the oppressed, Barravento was the initial cornerstone of a movement that was to be severely censored by the military dictatorship in Brazil. Very significantly, Barravento Novo was born fifty-five years later, at a moment when democracy was once again under threat and culture was again being oppressed. While in Glauber Rocha's film, Aruan points out over the Atlantic Ocean toward Africa shouting, "We must react!" in the punk-baroque work by Eder Santos the landscapes that surround us are searched for the answer to Firmino's cry: "Our time is coming!" Demanding an aesthetic and ethical stance in regard to images, the artist reminds us that art always runs against the wind (à barravento⁴).

Luiz Gustavo Carvalho