{"id":36763,"date":"2017-06-05T11:32:40","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T14:32:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=36763"},"modified":"2017-06-14T13:47:06","modified_gmt":"2017-06-14T16:47:06","slug":"from-canudos-to-providencia-over-120-years-of-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=36763","title":{"rendered":"Two Distant Places Intimately Connected Through the Birth of Brazil’s First Favela"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an old story<\/a> to anyone familiar with Rio\u2019s favelas and their history: the first favela was founded<\/a> in 1897, when veterans of the Canudos War<\/a>, most of them former slaves, established a community on a hill overlooking downtown Rio after the government reneged on a promise of land in exchange for fighting. The settlement, initially called \u201cFavela Hill\u201d after a robust\u00a0plant that grows in the backlands of Brazil\u2019s Northeast, where Canudos is located, is today known as Provid\u00eancia<\/a>, Rio\u2019s oldest favela, that is marking 120 years since its founding this year. A great deal of history both before and after that founding date, however, remains largely unremembered in Rio and Brazil at large. \u201cFavela Hill, to Provid\u00eancia, from Canudos,\u201d an exhibit by photographer Maur\u00edcio Hora<\/a>, on display at the National Development Bank Cultural Space<\/a> until July 14, seeks to change that perception.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The exhibition\u00a0was born out of Hora\u2019s travels to Canudos in the state of Bahia in 2013, in an effort to document life in the sert\u00e3o<\/a> (arid backlands) and seek out memory of the war \u201cthat must not be forgotten\u201d. Hora,\u00a0a native of Provid\u00eancia<\/a>, met with residents of the area around Canudos and recorded their stories. One of the most powerful parts of the exhibit are two installations, one meant to represent the interior of a home in Canudos, the other in Provid\u00eancia. Both spaces are centered around television sets playing interviews with residents of both areas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Juxtapositions and parallels between Canudos and Provid\u00eancia run through the entire exhibit. Water\u2014both its presence and its absence, a crucial difference for residents of the sert\u00e3o\u2014stands out in the photographs of Canudos, with an image of a wooden boat resting on dry, dusty land located near another of a boat filled with water while floating on a lake. Light also plays a central role in the Canudos photographs, sometimes mercilessly bright and other times sinister and dark, emphasizing the power of the elements over the people, plants, and animals that the images depict.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By contrast, the images of Provid\u00eancia are busier, with the formal city filling the background behind the scenes of the favela. Hora\u2019s photographs of his home focus on daily life, as residents collect water, children play, or a mother braids her daughter\u2019s hair outside their home. Though the photographs from the two areas occupy different sides of the exhibit hall, there is no explicit division between the two parts of the exhibition, emphasizing the historical continuity between the two\u00a0locales. Occasionally, the photographs\u2019 content links the two sections as well. One image from Canudos depicts a bridge built by confident engineers to last \u201ca thousand years,\u201d only to be submerged by rising water levels almost immediately. In Provid\u00eancia, meanwhile, residents remember a 1967 incident in which a large rock fell from the mountainside and killed multiple people, an event that baffled engineers in Rio, who had predicted that such a thing could never happen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Aside from documenting daily life in both locations, the exhibit also brings pieces of history to the forefront, filling in the gaps between 1897 and 2017. The Canudos War took place when Ant\u00f4nio Conselheiros, a charismatic religious leader, began speaking out against the rule of the young Brazilian Republic in the area around Canudos. After three military expeditions failed to dislodge him, the federal government in Rio instructed the leader of the fourth and final army sent to the Northeast \u201cnot to leave one stone on top of another in Canudos.\u201d After the destruction of the town and the death of nearly 25,000 inhabitants, the old city itself was flooded and covered by water. Only during periods of drought, in 1994, 2000, and 2013, were some of the original structures uncovered. Hora took advantage of the latest of these to photograph the region as the drought exposed the century-old debris.<\/p>\n

In Provid\u00eancia, the first street occupied and built by the veterans and their families was known as Cajueiros Street. The population of the community and other informal settlements like it swelled in the first decade of the twentieth century as the policies of Mayor Pereira Passos left many urban poor without homes<\/a>. It is unclear when the favela first became known as \u201cProvid\u00eancia Hill,\u201d but by the 1930s city documents were referring to it as such.<\/p>\n

This exhibit is not the first time that Hora has turned his camera on his community. A longtime activist and community leader in Provid\u00eancia, Hora has collaborated with Portuguese sculptor\u00a0Vihls’ installation in Provid\u00eancia<\/a> and French artist JR<\/a> on projects like his Women Are Heroes installation<\/a> and\u00a0the Yellow House cultural center<\/a>, also in Provid\u00eancia. Hora has also\u00a0staged exhibits of his photography in both Brazil and France. He is the director of the NGO Favelarte, and in 2011 released a graphic novel, \u201cFavela Hill,\u201d with artist Andr\u00e9 Diniz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFavela Hill\u201d links the Northeastern sert\u00e3o and the favelas of Rio, two areas\u00a0marginalized in contemporary Brazil<\/a>\u00a0that share a great deal despite geographical differences. Hora\u2019s exhibit makes an explicit\u00a0connection between these places, showing\u00a0that the favela was not an accident, but a manifestation of a Northeastern, Afro-Brazilian culture that had to adapt to difficult circumstances in Rio. On one wall in the exhibit hall hang pictures of a small church that stands in Provid\u00eancia today. In 1901, the wives of Canudos veterans built this structure in order to house a statue of Christ that had supposedly belonged to Ant\u00f4nio Conselheiros. The church became known as the Cruzeiro chapel<\/a>, even after the cross for which it was named was lost. Accompanying these images, the photographs\u2019 caption challenges the viewer: \u201cAnd yours? Where is your cross today?\u201d<\/p>\n

Exhibition\u00a0Details<\/h4>\n

Dates: May 24-July 14, 2017
\nMonday to Friday, except holidays, from 10am-7pm
\nGuided visits from Monday to Friday, except holidays, at 12:30pm; Wednesdays and Thursdays at 6:15pm<\/p>\n

Location: Espa\u00e7o Cultural BNDES
\nAv, Chile, 100 – Centro, Rio de Janeiro
\nNear Carioca Metro station<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas It\u2019s an old story to anyone familiar with Rio\u2019s favelas and their history: the first favela was founded in 1897, when veterans of the Canudos War, most of them former slaves, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":36818,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1288,1333,1268,1365,1329],"tags":[2439,1261,168,504,538,674,188,572,148,144],"writer":[2385],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-event-reports","9":"category-favelaculture","10":"category-whats-a-favela-2","11":"category-by-international-observers","12":"tag-canudos","13":"tag-central-rio","14":"tag-centro","15":"tag-culture","16":"tag-exhibition","17":"tag-memory","18":"tag-history","19":"tag-photography","20":"tag-port-region","21":"tag-morro-da-providencia","22":"writer-claire-jones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36763"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=36763"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=36763"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=36763"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=36763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}