{"id":47780,"date":"2016-06-18T23:46:39","date_gmt":"2016-06-18T23:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=47780"},"modified":"2016-06-19T17:33:12","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T17:33:12","slug":"a-brazilian-artists-self-portraits-explore-the-beauty-of-interracial-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=47780","title":{"rendered":"A Brazilian Artist\u2019s \u2018Self-Portraits\u2019 Explore The Beauty Of Interracial Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Brazilian Artist\u2019s \u2018Self-Portraits\u2019 Explore The Beauty Of Interracial Identity<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Huffington Post<\/a>
\n2016-06-17<\/p>\n

Katherine Brooks<\/strong><\/a>, Senior Arts & Culture Editor<\/p>\n

In honor of <\/em>mestizaje<\/a>, Adriana Varej\u00e3o<\/a> paints herself donning the markings and ornamentation of Native Americans.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1976, a Brazilian census asked citizens of the country \u2014 for the very first time \u2014 to describe and identify their own skin color.<\/p>\n

This was a significant moment for the former European colony, now considered one of the most ethnically diverse nations in the world, that\u2019s historically struggled with discriminatory policies that disproportionately affect African descendants and interracial people. Though it may have been used for more nefarious purposes at the time, the census was a small step in affirming the many identities that exist in Brazil<\/a>, wedged in the massive gap between black and white.<\/p>\n

The survey produced over 130 different skin color descriptions<\/a>, ranging from \u201cMorena-roxa\u201d (purplish-tan) to \u201cCaf\u00e9-com-leite\u201d (milky coffee) to \u201cQueimada-de-sol\u201d (sun-kissed). Fast forward a few decades, and Brazilian artist Adriana Varej\u00e3o<\/a> became transfixed with the multitude of colors expressed in the census, interested in the ways it illustrated \u2014 in sensual detail \u2014 the beauty of mestizaje<\/em><\/a>, or the mixing of ancestries, in her home.<\/p>\n

So in 2014,\u00a0Varej\u00e3o, who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro<\/a>, created \u201cPolvo<\/a>,\u201d a series of self-portraits that explore the diversity of identity in Brazil using a paint palette inspired by the 1976 census. First, she mixed oil paints herself, reproducing colors like \u201cAmarela-quemada\u201d (burnt yellow<\/a> or ochre<\/a>) and \u201cPara\u00edba\u201d (like the color of marupa wood<\/a>) as pigments. Then, she painted her own image, over and over, in a variety of browns, pinks, blacks and whites; a reflection of the many ways Brazilian self-definition takes form…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Brazilian Artist\u2019s \u2018Self-Portraits\u2019 Explore The Beauty Of Interracial Identity The Huffington Post 2016-06-17 Katherine Brooks, Senior Arts & Culture Editor In honor of mestizaje, Adriana Varej\u00e3o paints herself donning the markings and ornamentation of Native Americans. In 1976, a Brazilian census asked citizens of the country \u2014 for the very first time \u2014 to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,83,21,125,8],"tags":[17287,10108,17286,2425],"class_list":["post-47780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","tag-adriana-varejao","tag-huffington-post","tag-katherine-brooks","tag-the-huffington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47783,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47780\/revisions\/47783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}