IL FAUX

“Dance piece for a dispossessed body.
Illusion-confusion feat. power-resistance.
Dispossession meets fiction meets state violence meets meat meets flesh.
Creation as manipulation.
Smile like you like it, say hello to the guests.
Applause! A round of applause!
All that you see is real.”     

In 2019, my friend Ghyslaine Gau lent me a book called Between the World and Me by African-American writer Ta-Nehesi Coates. In this letter to his son, who was about to turn fifteen, Coates warns him about the dangers of being an African-American teenager and soon to be a black man. Overall, he expresses his fear that his son will lose his body. These last three words struck me as very familiar, something I knew from home – words that had been metabolized and turned into the transmission of the vocabulary of fear, the choreography of survival, the need to double-check the world around me to keep away from danger. It’s like a grammar that I learned at an early age and still carry in my body today, perhaps because the world does not let me forget that at any moment, I can be the next one to lose my body.         

Some time ago, I went to check my birth certificate and realized that the way my father (tried to) prevent me from those dangers was to register on that lifelong document that my skin color is tan (morena). And I remembered that some years ago, I saw a list of terms that the Brazilian population would use to define their skin colors, in a governmental research, back in 1976. On that list, morena (tan) is in the 84th position out of 134 terms. On that list, the Brazilian population used all its creativity to name what there is between black and white. Above all, they invented ways to avoid stamping on their skin the possibility of losing their bodies. Some of the terms mentionned on this list would not appear in that kind of research nowadays. Racism is still very present in Brazilian society, but they are definitely more racially aware and would name their skin color otherwise. Especially in the past two decades, with the black and brown population assuming their place as afro-descendents, even when you are number 32, or 78, or 111 on the list…         

On that list, in the 107th position, we find one word that kind of encompasses this variation between black and white: parda. Parda is nowadays the biggest part of the Brazilian population. Long ago, the Black community decided to embrace this part of the population and consider them all as black. Because pardo as an ethno-racial category started appearing out of violence, because the beauty of the mixture was not exactly one of the values of colonization, because theories of racial whitening was widely accepted and even guided State politics until the beginning of last century. And now still, the further we are from the black color, the closer we are to privilege – further away from the danger of losing our bodies.         

But pardo is also a kind of paper in Brazil. And that makes me think about Afro-Brazilian artist Maxwell Alexandre, who in 2017 created a series of paintings using pardo paper as a support, picturing black people in both ordinary and extraordinary situations. The color of black skin, confused with the color of paper, returns as a condition of resistance, as a reaction: “pardo is paper!” By doing this, Maxwell joins the political initiative of the Black movement and proposes a new power to us, the people. If we don’t actually have it, we dream it and write, sing, dance, paint it – as a call to history: the inescapable future of the reconquest of our bodies.         

Or to make the world understand that we are already there.         

• Calixto Neto         
• May 2023

Color

1. acastanhada

2. agalegada

3. alva

4. alva-escura

5. alverenta

6. alvarinta

7. alva-rosada

8. alvinha

9. amarela

10. amarelada

11. amarela-quemada

12. amarelosa

13. amorenada

14. avermelhada

15. azul

16. azul-marinho

17. baiano

18. bem-branca

19. bem-clara

20. bem-morena

21. branca

22. branca-avermelhada

23. branca-melada

24. branca-morena

25. branca-pálida

26. branca-queimada

27. branca-sardenta

28. branca-suja

29. branquiça

30. branquinha

31. bronze

32. bronzeada

33.bugrezinha-escura

34.burro-quando-foge

35. cabocla

36. cabo-verde

37. café

38. café-com-leite

39. canela

40. canelada

41. cardão

42. castanha

43. castanha-clara

44. castanha-escura

45. chocolate

46. clara

47. clarinha

48. cobre

49. corada

50. cor-de-café

51. cor-de-canela

52. cor-de-cuia

53. cor-de-leite

54. cor-de-ouro

55. cor-de-rosa

56. cor-firma

57. crioula

58. encerada

59. enxofrada

60. esbranque-cimento

61. escura

62. escurinha

63. fogoio

64. galega

65. galegada

66. jambo

67. laranja

68. lilás

69. loira

70. loira-clara

71. loura

72. lourinha

73. malaia

74. marinheira

75. marron

76. meio-amarela

77. meio-branca

78. meio-morena

79. meio-preta

80. melada

81. mestiça

82. miscigenação

83. mista

84. morena

85. morena-bem-chegada

86. morena-bronzeada

87. morena-canelada

88. morena-castanha

89. morena-clara

90. morena-cor-de-canela

91. morena-jambo

92. morenada

93. morena-escura

94. morena-fechada

95. morenão

96. morena-parda

97. morena-roxa

98. morena-ruiva

99. morena-trigueira

100. moreninha

101. mulata

102. mulatinha

104. negrota

105. pálida

106. paraíba

107. parda

108. parda-clara

109. polaca

110. pouco-clara

111. pouco-morena

112. preta

113. pretinha

114. puxa-para-branca

115. quase-negra

116. queimada

117. queimada-de-praia

118. queimada-de-sol

119. regular

120. retinta

121. rosa

122. rosada

123. rosa-queimada

124. roxa

125. ruiva

126. russo

127. sapecada

128. sarará

129. saraúba

130. tostada

131. trigueira

132. turva

133. verde

134. vermelha

List drawn up in 1976 by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics – IBGE, the government agency responsible for taking the census – in a research to collect the terms used by the population to describe their skin color. This list was found on the PhD thesis of Brazilian teacher-researcher-artist Eleonora Fabião, PRECARIOUS, PRECARIOUS, PRECARIOUS. Performative Historiography and the Energetics of Paradox: Arthur Bispo do Rosario’s and Lygia Clark’s works in Rio de Janeiro. New York University, 2006.