PhD Oral Exam - Rodrigo de Alcântara Barros Bueno, Art History

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

The Tupinambá or Tupi civilization, prominent in what is now Brazil before European colonization in 1500, practiced complex rituals that included featherwork, ancestral spectra, and gender matters. Their assojabas, or featherwork mantles, played a central role in anthropophagic ceremonies following wars. Contrary to Brazilian official narratives that foreground colonizers, my investigation exposes colonial stereotypes generated by colonial artistic practices. While illuminating ancient Indigenous practices and worldviews, such as featherwork, anthropophagic rituals, kinship, and sexual plurality, this historical revision also analyzes contemporary Brazilian art that reimagines colonial imagery and contests stereotypes around savagery, cannibalism, white supremacy, compulsory heterosexuality, and cisnormativity. I explore the resurgence of Tupi spectral legacies in contemporary Brazilian art, especially featherwork, and examine how these practices can intersect with other dissident identities (trans-Indigenous, Afro-diasporic, and Queer).

Thus, my research positions contemporary Brazilian art as a means of challenging Eurocentric norms by (1) highlighting the use of feather objects in early-modern Brazilian art, revisiting sixteenth-century Tupi feathered rituals; (2) analyzing the interaction between Tupi legacies and other dissident themes in contemporary Brazilian art, reevaluating practices and models from colonial times; (3) investigating diverse models of sexuality and ancestry connected to Tupi legacies. Additionally, I bridge knowledges between the Global North and South, drawing on Canadian, Brazilian, US and Latin American theorists to expand discussions of dissident art within a Pan-American context. I adopt the term “Abya Yala,” coined by the Kuna people of Colombia and Panama, to reference the Americas and assert Indigenous sovereignty. The intellectual context of my investigation rests on a transversal historical revisionist framework that embraces a fractal notion of time, informed by counter-hegemony, hauntology, and radical imagination. My methods encompass visual material analysis, interviews, and textual analysis. These interdependent approaches shape the entire dissertation through case studies and analyses grounded in gender studies, anti-colonial studies, queer studies, anthropology, and colonial and contemporary art history. Finally, my research embraces the haunting interruption of Western futures proposed by hauntology and the radical projection of the never imagined proposed by radical imagination, presenting the utopian capacity to project futures engendered by anti-colonial fantasies, bringing impactful contributions to dissident narratives in Brazil, Abya Yala, and beyond.