“We are Yoruba” or the Notion of African Art in Brazil Unavailable

On October 23, 2004, the Afro Brazil Museum¹ was inaugurated in São Paulo with a long-term exhibition featuring just over a thousand works from the private collection of its founder and curator, Emanoel Araujo (1940-2022). Among the sections of the exhibition, there was one dedicated to African art, mainly exhibiting works of Yoruba origin, such as Gelede and Egungun masks and Ibeji figures, among others. When I asked Araujo about the reasons for the predominance of works from these particular people, he immediately responded, “because we are Yoruba.” Twenty years after this exchange, and despite numerous studies on the Yoruba presence in Brazil, little attention has been given to the notion of African art constructed in Brazil, which reverberates in museum collections and in how objects have been acquired, documented, and exhibited. Without the pretense of providing definitive answers, I want to offer some clues to understand this complex...