Letícia Fernanda Carvalho Silva

This research excavates the authentic histories of the Brazilian enslaved women whose bodies Tarsila do Amaral’s seminal painting “A Negra” stereotypically historicized. Pioneering in its approach, it maneuvers Amaral’s pictorial work as a long-overlooked historical archive that can unveil silenced female Black narratives in Rafard and Capiravi, São Paulo. Working to dismantle Tarsila’s romanticized violation of Black female bodies, this interdisciplinary study predicates on a community-centered crafting of historical narratives that displace Black women from the (neo)colonial gaze by putting Black individuals at the heart of its articulation of decolonial archival work, oral history and museological intervention.