On February 9, "Luzia" closed the first retrospective in Mexico of the Brazilian artist Paulo Nazareth; Curated by Diane Lima and Fernanda Brenner, the exhibition opens a discussion that until a few years ago was veiled about what a mestizo state entails.

On the wall of the entrance to Paulo Nazareth's Luzia at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, hangs a pair of Havaianas with sky-blue straps. The plastic soles must have been white when they were first purchased; now, they are a khaki shade and bear the marks of the feet that wore them. At first, I thought the holes were from wear and tear (someone had put these sandals to good use) but then I was able to make out the outline of South America on the left sandal and, of course, Africa and the Arabian Peninsula on the right. One of the texts in the room explains: “Nazareth seeks to connect with the land and honor the legacies of those who were enslaved by walking only barefoot or in sandals, as a symbol of the curtailed freedoms and harsh realities in both the Americas and Africa.”

The Havaianas are the perfect work to begin the tour of the exhibition —they are a work tool that has become artwork and outline Nazareth’s geographical interest. They are also provocative (but not threatening), because in the neat galleries of the museum —a state institution— and under the watchful eye of a guard, the first work I face has been colored not with a beautiful pigment, but with dirt and dust. It is not the artist's hand, but time and his walking along the open road, his displacement and his encounters, which together have created the outline of this self-portrait: the footprints crossed by the territories that Nazareth carries within himself.

Without a doubt, the most important theme of the exhibition is African descent. The works condense some of the most pressing disciplinary discussions of Critical Race Theory (CRT): the sense of identity in the diaspora, belonging beyond nationality, and becoming through forced migration, displacement, slavery, and generational loss. These are very broad topics on which there are multiple perspectives, schools of thought and traditions that, in Mexico, we are largely unaware of or discuss only superficially. Interestingly, 2024 has brought with it more than one opportunity to connect with these traditions through exhibitions and performances: Jumko Ogata Aguilar and Cristian Baena Cerna have written insightful articles for this magazine about these other recent presentations by Afro-descendant artists in Mexico. Paulo Nazareth's exhibition at the Tamayo provides closure to this rich and fortunate coherence in the artistic programming of the country's capital during this year.

For those who are not familiar with his work, Paulo Nazareth is the first Afro-Brazilian artist to be included in the Venice Biennale, with a series of photographs that are both humorous and disturbing entitled Para Venda [For Sale] (2011), frontal and profile portraits of the artist where his face is hidden behind cranial remains, next to a sign advertising it for sale. One of the images in this series appears at the Tamayo with a sober caption noting only its title, date and credit. The image has multiple possible readings, but Nazareth's works never escape the discomfort of naming the burden of the past: he is a descendant of those who were treated as merchandise and registered as specimens. If it is a relief to think that slavery and eugenics are in the distant past, like fossils and bones in natural history museums, Nazareth points out that this is not true; Afro-descendants deal on a daily basis with the consequences of the trafficking of the people that gave its name to the Black Atlantic.

In the same room, L’arbre d’oublier [The Tree of Oblivion] (2012–2013) was mounted, a work of four black-and-white videos played on four different screens. Each video shows Nazareth walking backwards around the trunk of a tree, in a ritual that is the reverse of the one that used to be carried out by captives on the coast of Benin before setting out for the Americas: walking around a baobab tree, which the artist calls “The Tree of Oblivion”, in order to strip themselves of their memory, their past, and their humanity. Because of the way the screens were arranged —in a circle and facing outward— I also traced a circle around them with my steps, and I realized that I was imitating that painful detachment. The installation of the work made me a participant in an action and a ritual that, however simple and brief it may have been in the gallery, invoked the horror of the experience of slavery and its continued presence in our lives. Nazareth demonstrates that an activity that may seem ordinary to some, such as walking, can still be used to point to the past and give meaning to the present.

This is one of the most important aspects to highlight about Luzia: the curatorial work of Diane Lima and Fernanda Brenner is excellent. As a team, they have not only been able to select the works of Nazareth that are most suitable for the Mexican public, but they have also used the space in the rooms of the Museo Tamayo to their unique advantage. Nazareth is a canonical Latin American artist, and with Luzia, a title taken from the oldest fossil skeleton found in Brazil (destroyed in the fire at the National Museum in 2018), the curators have prioritized those works of his that explore the role of the museum and collections in Latin America. It is an exhibition full of surprises, details and moments for introspection, where Lima and Brenner knew how to balance the most painful works with the most hopeful ones, such as Sandias [Watermelons] (2024): adobe balloons filled with coconut fiber split on the floor of one of the museum's terraces, inside which some watermelon seeds were just beginning to germinate.

Overall, I think the works commissioned for the exhibition are wonderful. White Mask (2024) is definitely the most representative work of Mexican racism that I have ever seen: four Memin Pinguin dolls with their faces painted white with efun, a white powder from Nigeria that is often used in offering or initiation rituals in the tradition within the Yoruba religion. If sociologist Monica Moreno Figueroa and philosopher Mariana Ortega have been able to theoretically break down the way in which this caricature represents the depth of racism in our country, White Mask transforms their arguments into a masterful work with the simple and effective use of the character and a title that appeals to Frantz Fanon's classic work, Piel negra, mascaras blancas [Black Skin, White Masks] (1952). This should be a subject of study in all art history classes in the country.

Another commissioned work, Malinche (2024), is more opaque: a lithographic stone engraved with one of the Texas Fragments of the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (1530–1540). These are familiar images for those who grew up with SEP textbooks: Hernan Cortes, the Tlaxcalan warrior Xicotencatl, and Malinche, in several scenes of their first meeting and subsequent alliance. The Lienzo is interesting because it demonstrates how indigenous and European visual cultures began to merge in the 16th century. One of my favorite details in this Fragment is that some of the Tlaxcalan figures retain the shape of the feet from pre-Hispanic codices, in which the toes curl over the front of the huarache, giving them a clawed appearance. Meanwhile, in the folds of a flag fluttering across the top of the scene there is a clear effort to create volume, a visual effect that belongs, instead, to the European Renaissance tradition. The scene is crossed by a path with prints made by horse paws and human feet, and perhaps that is what Nazareth alludes to when appropriating the Fragment: the encounter, on foot, between two worlds in the territory we now call Mexico. This analysis leaves me unsatisfied, as there are better examples of codices that allude to the march in indigenous society: Why, then, would he choose the Texas Fragments? Malinche is perhaps the only work in the exhibition that, in my opinion, required more interpretation.

As enigmatic as the commissioned works are, the crux of the exhibition is Noticias da America [News from America] (2010–ongoing), a series of color photographs that record Nazareth’s journey on foot from Brazil to the U.S., which brought him to Mexico in 2011, an episode from which the ten images exhibited at the Tamayo were selected. These are scenes in which we see the artist with people he met during the trip and where he is seen, almost always, with a sign in his hand: sitting on a curb next to a man in an FBI cap, announcing: “I carry messages to the U.S. [sic]”. On a boardwalk, with the sign: “I am looking for a boat to Cuba”. At a churros stand, declaring: “I am selling my image as an exotic man.” The prints were mounted on wooden poles screwed to the floor and ceiling, which places them away from the wall surface and, perhaps, also from the preciousness attributed to artworks with a capital A. I like it because the poles convey the feeling of an unfinished work, a work in progress, and Noticias is undoubtedly a series that will continue as long as Nazareth continues to cross these territories on foot.

I can't run out of reasons to go back and see Luzia. It is an exemplary exhibition that confronts us with the vestiges of the Black Atlantic, the experience of racism in Mexico, the syncretic rituals of Afro-descendants in the Americas, and the experience of migration and the movement of bodies in space. At a time when Mexico is seeking to position itself as a member of the Global South, Nazareth's work encompasses the history and social relations that set Latin America apart, and reminds us how neglected these issues are in the national public discourse. Fortunately, it also traces the possible affinities from this territory and opens up the possibility for us to better understand how African descent can be made visible —yes, even here.