In the chaos of the pandemic, art and activism unite to resist

Credit: Disclosure

By: Renato Silva / Lupa do Bem – Favela em Pauta

It was after almost a year and a half of the pandemic that five powerful artists and activists from the Baixada Fluminense came together to launch a collective with the intention of promoting art in the territory.

The master of ceremonies, Alexandra Mércia (Malê); the multi-artist and student of social sciences, Bea Simões; the photographer and social media, Bea Araújo; with art educator and psychology student, Carol Bulhões, and rapper Eufena, launched on June 24 what can be considered an artistic amplifier, Artivismo.BXD.

In Baixada, the distance and lack of access are added to many other gaps caused by the negligence of the public power, and that have been harming artists in the region over time. The closest city to the centre of Rio de Janeiro, for example, is Duque de Caxias, which is 25 km away and has high intercity public transport costs, which can cost up to R$ 12.00, as is the case with line 2486C Passeio x Xerém, from TREL.

For this reason, artists from the region, for decades, have been building movements to promote peripheral art in the municipalities of Rio de Janeiro. However, the pandemic has put even the most articulate in the art scene to the test. Proof of this is shown by the survey on the perception of the impacts of COVID-19 on the cultural and creative sectors in Brazil, carried out by UNESCO. The survey points out that in the first four months of the pandemic, 48.8% of workers in the country’s culture sectors were impacted with a 100% drop in their income, while 21.34% of professionals lost more than half of their income.

For co-founder Alexandra Mércia, the difficulty for artists to keep producing art in Caxias and Baixada was one of the main reasons for creating the initiative. “We were seeing that in the periphery it is being very difficult in the quarantine, in the river many things were already happening, here too, many things happening, but not aimed at a culture in which we bring alternatives, right? So we got together: they are producers, they are artists, they are photographers, united for us to organize better and a way to help, to try to positively impact this most affected audience”, she commented.

Artivismo BXD: organisation to resist

The collective was born from the plural experiences of these “artivists” in the city of Duque de Caxias and surroundings, as well as a core of culture inherent to a larger structure, the Movimento de Educação Popular + Nós, which serves the education axis. In addition, the collective Movimenta Caxias, an organization for political mobilization in the territory, has been gaining more local notoriety and, now, Artivism.BXD, as a potentiator of rappers and several other artists.

Regarding the profile of the works, the coordinator states that they are thinking of approaching more aspects such as the beauty, origins and potency of the periphery in the works published by the initiative. “We don’t want to talk about the mother who loses a child anymore, but it’s not because we don’t want to talk about it, it’s because we don’t want to live it anymore. Then, we see a beautiful work, an incredible thing, talking about ancestry, [and we provide] support for the work to get off the ground,” says Malê.

And, as a collective led by women, the group believes that the daily practice is the best weapon against the machismo that also exists in the cultural environment. “They see women face to face making decisions, and I think we end up showing all this, in practice, you know?”, he reflects.

“We have been taking this care when calling someone to go there. Like: ‘So, shall we call a girl?’ Because then they already see female figures in different spaces, both teaching and ballet, or making decisions, singing raps, being a DJ, graffiti, etc.”, concludes the coordinator.

Vinicius Souza, a follower and also a singer and songwriter in Baixada Fluminense, with the duo Canto Perene, believes that courage is one of the most important factors in this initiative. “I think making art is an act of courage, making art in a place where you don’t have time to consume art, because you have to put food on your plate and the forms of leisure are kind of the same – which doesn’t include much consuming art. art disseminated by the media – makes artistic making even more courageous. But it’s not every day that we have the courage, so these movements appear to help us fight a little more”, says the artist.