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Schipper mag ik overvaren? (Captain can I cross over?), 2025
HD Video, Single-channel, color, sound, 09:30 

The post Schipper mag ik overvaren? appeared first on Patricia Werneck Ribas.

Para M (To M), 2023
Single channel, video, sound, 11:47 min.

Watch trailer: https://mediakunst.net/professional/#!/artwork/ma-1022470

A woman’s voice passionately addresses the enigmatic figure “M” in a narrative that initially portrays a positive shift as one colonial ruler replaces another. However, the story ultimately exposes the persistent and oppressive nature of the colonial enterprise within an enduring framework.

The initial “M” refers to Maurits in Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, a seventeenth-century governor sent to Brazil as a representative of the Dutch West Indies Company. Despite the prevailing positive perception of this governmental change and idealized views of Maurits’s presence in Brazil, recent research uncovers the dark legacy of his dictatorship. The letter “M” emerges as a symbol branded on the skin of enslaved Africans under his possession.

Through a creative juxtaposition of images featuring women and reappropriated colonial arte-facts in and around Recife,Brazil —an outpost of Dutch occupation—the essay film intricately weaves a poetic letter. It seeks to discern the potential for the subaltern voice to articulate itself. The film powerfully underscores that, while the articulation of truth may demand time, its revelation remains an inevitable prospect.

Read article on Para M by curator and writer Ive Stevenheydens on Mediakunst.net:

This project was mas possible with the generous support of The Mondriaan Fonds, Amarte Fonds and CBK Zuidoost.

The post Para M appeared first on Patricia Werneck Ribas.

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The Possessed, 2022
Single-channel video, sound, 16:15min

Watch teaser: https://mediakunst.net/professional/#!/artwork/ma-1022040

In The Possessed, Patricia Werneck Ribas alludes to the resilience of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble in the face of colonial and modernist imposition. 

The artist juxtaposes fragments of influential texts from European thinkers over footage of practitioners of Candomble carrying out rituals on a deserted Brazilian beach. But they are not invoking demons that horror films and Christianity would have us believe. Candomble arose through a process of syncretism between traditional religions of West Africa, particularly that of the Yoruba, and the prevalent Roman Catholicism in Brazil when it was still a colony of Portugal. 

Brought to Brazil by the Portuguese during the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century, enslaved Africans were taken to plantations where few could speak the same language.  It was in the plantation owners’ own interest to discourage communication – all for the sake of avoiding rebellion. Despite this language barrier, they could still recognize common elements in each other’s belief systems. Thus they attempted to create a sense of community for themselves, separated from their families and displaced unwillingly from one continent to another.

Although Candomblé has always been marginalized by the Roman Catholic church, it has grown in popularity and remains a site of resistance against white Christian European domination.

Read article on The Possessed by curator and writer Ive Stevenheydens on Mediakunst.net

This project was made possible with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund.

The post The Possessed appeared first on Patricia Werneck Ribas.

This work is also distributed by LIMA

Watch trailer here

©2020 Patricia Werneck Ribas

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This project was made possible with the financial support of the Mondriaan Fund.

Press Release:

Since the 1800s German people have been fascinated with Native Americans. A rough estimate is that 40,000 to 80,000 people, all over the country, participate in ‘powwows’ where they dress up in traditional clothing, dance together and chant. Patricia Werneck Ribas traveled to a little village called Grimma close to Dresden to collect images of these gatherings and to research these phenomena. It may be a surprise to learn that dressing up as indigenous peoples is a thriving subculture in these cold lands. These scenes of German people in full native costume dancing in a circle inside a huge tent have a documentary character. The artist wanted to go beyond looking at the absurdity of white people dressing up as Native Americans, however. We see men and women wearing headdresses made of eagle feathers chanting and stamping their feet while wearing noisy bells on their ankles. In their leather beaded moccasins, fringed patchwork aprons, shiny sequined skirts, they slowly circle the large canvas tent. Patricia Werneck Ribas learned that these chants are carefully researched and the rituals are supposedly ‘authentic’. For some people, these gatherings are seen as cultural appropriation and are controversial. For this artwork, the artist has added something else. She edited a conversation between two tribal women from South America looking at the video images of the Germans slow dancing in their ‘exotic’ costumes. The sound of the Europeans chanting can be heard in the background while the women speak. This unexpected combination is neither critical nor condoning these fascinating get-togethers, just opening up a space to reflect on what it means to be ‘the other’.

The video begins with the camera slowly panning down to the ground, showing us where all plants emerge from. From the start, we are invited to look differently at this lush European landscape.  The Germans wear clothes inspired by the Sioux and Dakota tribes, and these events belong to a revered history following the extensive German colonization in the Americas. Buffalo Bill, an American soldier, and bison hunter toured Europe, performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. These shows inspired German children, and then adults, to dress up in indigenous clothing and learn about the different native cultures. Even before the First World War circuses brought over people from the Americas and powwows became much more common in German towns and villages. Now tourism thrives in reservations in the USA, continuing the German fascination with the ‘exotic’ and romantic idea of the native warrior and a culture that has an ‘innocent’ communion with nature.  Stories about the Mid-West, travel diaries, and documentaries about the white people’s colonization of Western states fed into idealistic literature, in particular, narratives of resistance as native societies resisted American dominance.  In addition, when the German film industry was in crisis at the start of the 20^th Century, German ‘cowboy and Indian’ films helped revive the German film industry, which also fed into the Teutonic fascination with the ‘Wild West’ and people from the prairies. 

So, in this video, women from a non-specific tribe heard that some people from the North have affinities with the Indian spirit and organize these powwows in huge tents. Watching this video is as if the two women are also observers of these scenes. Seeing potential in a shared love of nature, they wanted to study the possibilities of contacting the Germans to see if they could be allies in the women’s quest to take over the world, finding solutions to global environmental problems.

This video combines footage of native Germans dancing in a tent with audio and subtitled observations from undisclosed observers. Here, they are viewers, too.  Looking at these images is their ‘first contact’ with Northern Europeans.  The women wondered – will people in the North be willing to abandon their comforts? What would they give up to help save the planet?  The women’s plan is not yet known but there around 40 million indigenous people in Latin America getting ready to organize themselves and investigating the possibilities of working together for a common cause.

In Patricia Werneck Ribas’s video, we don’t see the women, but we hear their voices. Speaking in a mysterious language they say, “Our proposal is unique in the history of humankind. We need to help them overcome greed and individualism.”  They are passionate about their mission to transform the world. Fading out at the end, we are still left with questions about the relationship between the indigenous women from South America and the German devotees of North American tribal cultures. Will this encounter be a real possibility of enabling change or are the women’s hopes just a fantasy? 

text © Siobhan Wall 2019

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