From Kutanda to Quitandinha → 80 years

​

The Bantu-Kongo territorial and linguistic group come to Brazil hijacked from West-Central Africa, since 16st century. With this, cultural references that are currently amalgamated in our daily lives, are expanded. Brazil is Bantu. The practice of street markets is, perhaps, one of the most African references that we still produce and that identifies us. It is no surprise that several types of Afro-Brazilian consumption remain present in the markets, such as the consumption of herbs and, in many cases, typical Bahia’s delicacies.

Then, the word “kutanda” remind us of these origins. Thus, we open this exhibition reminding Quitandinha that the term that names itself has African origin, which shows, in this exhibition, in it entrance rooms, the sales practice, a cultural practice that has spread itself, taking place on the streets of Brazil, carried out, above all, by black women. From “kutanda”, we bought the first historical and geographical references of the “quilombos” that build the city of Petrópolis, a place that has always had, since its firsts occupations, the presence of black people. But, the history spread itself, nowadays the City Market is becoming a stronghold of Afro-centered practices, empowerment and consumption, of the pride expressed in hair and hairstyles, music and arts. The research highlights us that Quitandinha surprisingly was the first place to host the Furacão 2000 funk team.

The commitment to the new and the avant-garde makes us move forward, come to and go from history, as in the body of sankofa bird, that remembers the past that constitute it to move forward. From the past, we brought the first abstract art exhibition of the country, that occurred at 1953, in the Quitandinha halls. Organized by Décio Vieira, a renowned artist residing in Petrópolis, the exhibition featured exponents of Brazilian art, such as Anna Bella Geiger, Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark, Fayga Ostrower, Ivan Serpa, Zélia Salgado, Antônio Bandeira, Abraham Palatnik, Aluísio Carvão, Tomás Santa Rosa, Rossini Perez, among others.

Who leads us to rescue this story is the artist Anna Bella Geiger, with whom

we talked to follow the paths and hypotheses about Quitandinha's leading role in her artistic achievements. Anna Bella then receives a small retrospective for which we selected, together, her first exercises in abstraction and expanded the research to her pioneering work in video art.