An exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts in central Rio de Janeiro is bringing attention to eight women who contributed to the struggle against slavery in Brazil. “Brazilian Abolitionists” pairs artworks created in their honor with pieces reflecting on the legacy of abolition, including questions of ancestry, basic rights and spirituality.
The women featured are Adelina, an 1870s and 1880s cigar seller who passed information to Maranhão’s abolitionist movement; Esperança Garcia, an enslaved woman who wrote a legal petition in 1770 describing the abuse she and her children suffered; and Aqualtune, who helped lead the Palmares quilombo. The exhibition also includes Anastácia, Luiza Mahin, Maria Felipa, writer Maria Firmina dos Reis and Maria Tomásia Figueira Lima, a founder of a women-led anti-slavery society in Ceará.
For most of the women, their appearance is unknown. Curator Ana Carla Soler says the lack of visual records helped lead to their stories being treated as myths or legends, and that their histories have survived through oral tradition and the resistance of Black communities. Maria Tomásia Figueira Lima is the only white woman in the group and the only one whose appearance is known.
The project began after a collector asked the Instituto Artistas Latinas to commission works by Black women artists, citing the limited representation of Black artists in his collection. The Institute invited eight Brazilian artists whose work engages with Black history to choose a woman from a list it had compiled and interpret her biography using any medium or technique.
The resulting works were first presented at the Museum of Art of Rio in 2024. As the exhibition travelled to Recife, Brasília and São Paulo, each host institution added works by local artists and pieces from its own collection. The current Rio edition includes 47 artists.
The artists bring distinct approaches to their subjects. Roberta Holiday paints a red Atlantic Ocean surrounded by cowrie shells in her work about Luiza Mahin, connecting her story to movement between Africa and Brazil. Mariana Maia depicts Maria Felipa, who resisted Portugal’s efforts to retain control of Bahia after Brazil’s independence in 1822, in forms associated with the orixás Iansã and Iemanjá.
For her portrait of Anastácia, Thaís Iroko created a diptych. One canvas presents a more traditional portrait, with a sharp tongue as a symbol of defiance; in the other, the artist repeats the painting’s movements while blindfolded. Iroko says she considered what she could silence in herself to approach the story of a woman whose voice was suppressed.
Soler says the additional works show how abolition remains unfinished. The exhibition echoes the view that slavery can only be considered truly over when society achieves racial equality.
Sources: Folha Ilustrada.