To go through Aislan Pankararu’s work is like going through the symbology of the northeastern hinterland in its most singular angle. Through the bowels of the Caatinga, through each of its twisted, thorny or flowering branches, we find a visual representation of the essence of the backlands people who were, and will continue to be, INDIGENOUS. This is an ancestral essence.

The Pankararu people, to which we belong, are located in the hinterland of Pernambuco, but against the impoverished and shallow vision of our diversities, new narratives are awakening to say that we are here and we can tell our story, leave our marks on the world, and speak for us. The concept of art has always been reserved for the culture of the dominant class, and we have been assigned the place of folklore. We have been described and represented throughout history through mythological, distant narratives, and since colonization they do with our image whatever they want. The problem is that whiteness still doesn’t understand us.

A work with which we identify, that we not only contemplate, but in which we see ourselves in our innermost being, realizing how beautiful and great it is in a way we have never experienced before, even with each element belonging to our everyday life, to our tradition, to our memory. In each of Aislan’s strokes I can see the cansanção nettle, the path I take to my grandmother’s house, and when I danced the Corrida do Imbu for the first time. I see the jurema tree, espinheiro, faveleira and macambira. Graphism and ritual symbologies that flow infinitely, like perfect cycles that break with the idea of time. You can see the beginning of life in a tree root and eternity in its seed, just like us, who have the umbilical cord attached to a deep root and branches spread out to bear fruit, seeds, germinate, and be the infinite. It is more than any notion about art, it is a notion of belonging. It is knowing exactly where our primal tree is planted, it is having a visual identity that represents in a thousand and one ways the same people, the same region, a biome, and within each specificity, a universe for new identifications.

I realize that our current generation, and indigenous peoples in general, are seeking genuine identification in all fields of the arts. I feel this identification with the work of Aislan Pankararu not only because we belong to the same people, but also because I know that many people of this region also see themselves in the white graphisms typical not only of the Pankararu people, but of a whole chain of peoples who are interconnected by the same umbilical cord. Our heroes were never princes or emperors, they were the ones who died defending their people. It’s time we had our own idols. Aislan goes on to create more than identifications - he goes on to affirm an identity. Aislan marks a point in time and space for a new era in the visual arts, and I feel privileged to see this chapter of history being written, to be a contemporary of his, and also a fan.
 

With love and deep identification,

Bia Pankararu*

*Bia Pankararu is a Nursing Technician and Audiovisual Producer.