Anti-racist Artistic Practices: Moisés Patrício and Mirta Toledo

Abstract

In this paper I will attempt to figure out the modalities that anti-racist practices take from a decolonial perspective through a comparative case study of the works of Moisés Patrício (São Paulo, 1984) and Mirta Toledo (Buenos Aires, 1952). Patrício is an artist and teacher of African descent who links his artistic practice with a project that focuses on exposing and tensing the currently existing racism in Brazil, especially in São Paulo. It is interesting to analyze his performances in which the emphasis put on the black culture elements and body in Brazil is stressed. Toledo is an Argentinean artist who lived in the United States and now lives in Buenos Aires, daughter of an Afro-Guarani man. She works with several creative practices such as sculpture, painting, collage and writing. Her works are focused on highlighting ethnic diversity and her indigenous roots while questioning the pro-European ideal in image construction. To achieve this, I will present the modalities that both of their discursive and artistic practices take in relation to an anti-racist stance. I will do so to compare them and understand the way in which said practices are linked to the politics of each of their specific current and historical context s, and to determine if these practices create new modalities of visual production today, opposing to the prevailing hegemonic national discourses about the ‘mixture of races’ in Brazil and the purely European descent in Argentina.