Bruno Baptistelli: Linguagem
Bruno Baptistelli's Linguagem (2015) consists of two silkscreen panels, each printed entirely in black on black canvas, bearing the words "Negro" and "Preto". In one panel, the letters appear in black on a black background that reads as more opaque than the word itself; in the other, the relationship is reversed, with the surrounding field appearing less opaque than the lettering. The result is a subtle interplay between figure and ground, in which neither word ever fully resolves into clarity, a formal choice that mirrors the linguistic and political ambiguity at the core of this piece.
These distinctions, far from being merely semantic, touch on questions of colourism and the lived realities of differing skin tones within Black communities. Linguagem holds this tension in visual form, refusing to resolve the binary it presents. In doing so, the work expands the exhibition's exploration on the links between Blackness and Pan-Africanism, offering a distinctly Lusophone and Brazilian perspective on the politics of naming, language and identity.
In 2010, following pressure from activists in the Brazilian Black movement, the Racial Equality Statute introduced the term negro to collectively designate those categorised as pretos and pardos. The term preto, used to describe darker-skinned Black people, sits in complex relationship with pardo, a word that entered Brazil with the Portuguese invasion of 1500. Its earliest dictionary definitions – linking it to a colour between white and black, and associating mixed-race people with mules and monsters – reveal the systemic violence embedded in colonial racial nomenclature. This new legal grouping was introduced to reflect longstanding socioeconomic similarities between the two populations, both consistently distinguished from white people in key indicators.
Although frequently used interchangeably today, negro and preto carry distinct connotations within Brazil's complex racial discourse. Preto is often used to describe individuals with darker skin who are not of mixed racial heritage, while negro carries broader political and historical resonance, tied to the affirmations and struggles of Black movements throughout the twentieth century; from civil rights activism to the music of samba, blues, rap and trap artists that Baptistelli draws upon as reference points.
Bruno Baptistelli's work explores the relationships between people and the spaces they occupy, attending closely to how objects, architecture, society and language shape and reshape those relationships. Working mostly in site-specific contexts, he combines objective approaches to space with subjective and political perspectives grounded in lived experience.
