Closer to PIPA: the artist speaks in the Institute collection

We invited Jaime Lauriano to tell us a bit about his artworks “Bandeirantes #1” and “Bandeirantes #2”, from 2019, which were part of the artist’s section in the Finalists’ Exhibition of PIPA Prize 2019. Check out below the text Jaime sent us:

“Named ‘bandeiras’, and organized by individuals known as Bandeirantes (pioneers), multiple expeditions left mainly the state of São Paulo (initially the captaincy of São Vicente) heading to the interior of Brazil in search of gold, and aiming to capture enslaved people who escaped and indigenous people to use as slave labour. For being an exploratory movement, the bandeirantes exceeded the limits of the Treaty of Tordesilhas (1494) and expanded the Portuguese domains in America. Because of their goals, many bandeiras were constituted as expeditions to capture and destroy autonomous communities and to maintain slavery.

Due to manipulations, inherent to processes of historical construction, the bandeirantes became polemic and contradictory figures. This happens because there are numerous divergencies between the actions taken by the bandeirantes and the memory built around these figures of Brazilian History. In its great majority, the representations that we know the best, and that inhabit the popular imagery, specially that of the residents of the state of São Paulo, raise the bandeirantes to the status of national heroes, always portraying them as strong, brave and fearless men who fought against a series of obstacles: vicious indigenous people, forts of enslaved people who escaped, among other fictions created to enlarge even more their ‘achievements’. In this process, some facts are discarded, such as, for example, the nationality of the bandeirantes, since many weren’t even really Portuguese, and the social reality of them, disregarding that many were seen as persona non grata in Portugal, and also the fact that a lot of bandeirantes’ expeditions were hired to exterminate all and any possibility of abolitionist fight organized by enslaved people who escaped from mills and farms.

In their expeditions, the bandeirantes built houses that worked as shelter for their troops. Constructed with the rammed earth technique, they had a typically simple floor plan. A central door, with a porch, flanked by two front rooms – the guest bedroom and the chapel – opens into a main hall, through which there’s access to other rooms, or alcoves.

The best known bandeirantes were, in their great majority, from what we understand today as the state of São Paulo. Among them stood out: Antônio Raposo Tavares, Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva, Domingos Calheiros, Domingos Jorge Velho, Estevão Parente, Fernão Dias Paes, Manuel Borba Gato, Morais Navarro and Pascoal Moreira Cabral.

In the work series ‘Bandeirantes’, miniatures that pay homage to the bandeirantes, bought in flea markets, antique fairs and auction houses are remade from the foundry of brass and ammunition cartridges used by the Military Police and by the Brazilian Armed Forces. As a base for the sculpture, a solid cube was built by applying the rammed earth technique.

The choice of utilizing ammunition cartridges used by the Military Police and by the Brazilian Armed Forces was to highlight the centrality of the figure of true genocides, such as the bandeirantes, in the construction of national identity and the notion of security and national sovereignty. This fact is made clear in the multiple monuments, squares and roads in tribute of the bandeirantes. However, the most perverse facet of these homages is found in the homages rendered by the armed wing of the state, such as: the OBAN (Bandeirante Operation), information, investigation and repression center of the military dictatorship, which had Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra as its best known name; or the Batalhão Bandeirante (Binfa-14), a special operations group of the Brazilian Air Force (FAB); among others”.

• Luiz Camillo Osorio in conversation with Jaime Lauriano, 2019
• “Assentamento”, by Bernardo Mosqueira
• “In this land, whatever is planted will grow”, by Germano Dushá
• “Jaime Lauriano –  A conceptual transition”, by Leonardo Araújo
• “Impedimento”, by Daniela Castro
• “A History narrated in the first-person singular”, by Isabella Rjeille
• “Brinquedo de furar moletom (toy that pierce sweatpants)”, by Raphael Fonseca