The Ancestral: Afro-América

Flora Gilchrist

Mayara Ferrão, Álbum de Desesquecimentos, 2024. On display at The Ancestral: Afro-América exhibition at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB), August 2024.

Brazil has a complex, substantial and interconnected relationship with West African countries and North America. Ancestral ties from Brazil’s role in the transatlantic slave trade as a Portuguese colony transporting and receiving slaves from Nigeria, coupled with the modern-day movement of immigrants and asylum seekers from Cameroon, Togo and Angola has contributed to a lasting Afro-Brazilian presence in Brazil. This diasporic multicultural presence is particularly evident in more populous Brazilian cities such as Rio, São Paulo, and Salvador. These cultural ties manifest themselves in many ways, such as Afro-Brazilians, specifically those of Yoruba Nigerian descent living in Brazil, continuing to practice their religions of Candomblé and Umbanda. Following a visit to The Ancestral: Afro-América exhibition at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB) during the summer, it is clear that this cultural tie is still being explored, celebrated, and understood in a multitude of artistic forms.  

The CCBB, the former commercial association of Rio de Janeiro turned cultural hub, is situated by the port in the centre of Rio. Spanning the entirety of the first floor The Ancestral: Afro-América showcases the diversity of Brazil’s diasporic community. The exhibition displays around 160 artworks by black artists from Brazil, West Africa, and North America, thus celebrating a loose shared heritage. The exhibition itself has been recreated and reimagined across many gallery spaces, from São Paulo in October 2024, Rio de Janeiro over summer 2025 and is currently on display in Salvador. Curators Lauren Haynes and Ana Beatriz wished to present the works of Afro-American and Afro-Brazilian artists and their perspectives, similarities, and differences on topics such as belonging, self-fashioning the body, and decoloniality. The exhibition space is made up of a multitude of different sized white, cubed spaces, with corridors and coloured walls. The artworks themselves are varied mediums, from black and white photographic series to colourful textile prints to sculptures.  

One piece encapsulates the complexity of Afro-Brazilian culture and identity: Mayara Ferrão’s Álbum de Desesquecimentos, 2024. Ferrão’s photographic series consists of multiple photographs, all staged together against the wall in a scattered pattern. All the photographs are in black and white apart from the central coloured photo. The photographs themselves depict various scenes of two women in love, from wedding days, intimate bedroom scenes and embracing in nature, whether that be beaches, jungles, or parks. Ferrão combines this exploration of queer love with a sense of Afro-Brazilian diasporic identity, as these women differ from photo to photo, with various ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Hidden queer stories have often remained unexpressed and subdued in mainstream institutional spaces, regardless of the specific country’s mindset and prevailing laws on homosexuality. The visual scattering of the works in frames encapsulates the fleeting aspect of these moments, most are in private secluded locations, and offer a singular, contrived moment in time, displaying what could have been. Photography as the chosen medium further accentuates the fleetingness of these scenes; we are denied knowledge of the true length, context, and time of these photos. 

The most interesting aspect of this work is the fact that these photos are completely contrived and generated using AI technology. The relationship between AI and art has become increasingly relevant and contentious, prompting questions of ownership, the historical past and originality. However, Ferrão utilises AI as a means of reclaiming a voice for those who have for so long been removed from mainstream history. These images create meaningful documentations of the past lives of queer black women, who lived out their romantic lives and identities in secret. Ferrão’s choice of AI images is purposeful, acting as a literal embodiment and visualisation of those once erased from history. Therefore, Ferrão’s work acts as a reminder that AI can indeed be used for good, especially in the case of creating images which offer a celebratory space for those once forgotten. Instead of hindering originality, in this instance Ferrão’s use of AI technology facilitates a remapping of queer joy in an imaginative, safe, and celebratory method. 

The varied and transcendent works at The Ancestral: Afro-América exhibition showcase the diverse relationship between art and identity, offering an insight into the past and present voices who have very often been silenced in institutional spaces. The exhibition offers an important prioritisation of Afro-Brazilian and Afro-American voices and marks a beginning of curatorial endeavours in which cultural hybridity is celebrated in the white cube space.