Convergence of affections

Agnaldo Farias | Convergences of Affection, 2024

A lover of life and of his people, Guilherme Almeida has placed African tradition at the center of his poetics. The strength of his work stems from this clarity—from an interest in ensuring a central position for the knowledge and religions of African ancestry, whose living presence, beyond its crucial role in tightening the bonds between body, spirit, and nature, serves as a trench of resistance. Canvases such as Perfumes para Senhor do Bonfim, Cosme e Damião, Subindo a Barroquinha atrás de Santa Bárbara, Se arrumando para Yemanjá, and Samba de roda are protagonized by economical representations, carved in thick outlines and vivid colors, of women, men, the elderly, and children engaged in everyday rites of praise to the deities, in the recognition that earthly activities are justified by endeavors connected to the past. The respectful and constant reclaiming of these practices—especially those occurring in the open air, which take over the body of the city—makes the ancestors present once again, treading the ground they once walked barefoot. It is a process in which the ancient is the sap flowing through the veins of young bodies.

Notable is the quest of this young artist and the lucidity with which he employs the newspaper as an integral part of his painting. As a student at the Federal University of Bahia, he did not understand or accept the prescription of canvases for painting—the language he adopted for himself. The intransigence of his professors seemed to him a way of reproducing a discretionary theory and practice, alien to the reality of the outskirts of Salvador and the Recôncavo where he lives and where his family and peers are spread—places where the meager and the ordinary, such as newspapers, soda cans, and PET plastic bottles, are precious.

Guilherme Almeida’s recycling process—the touchstone of the new bourgeois agenda—has been consciously and intelligently practiced since time immemorial by the underprivileged strata of all the peoples that make up Brazil. The articulation of human figures and objects within these scenes, between planes of flat colors and newspaper clippings, allows the subjects to keep one foot in the intangible sphere and the other in reality. In these current works, the press—which in Brazil is the herald of established values—must grapple with profound human values: street festivals, gatherings with friends and partners, the commerce of pure feelings, and the belief that everything that exists should be guided by higher orientations. Despite all the pain suffered and yet to be suffered, for the road remains arduous, the lyrics of the immortal samba Alegria by Assis Valente—himself a child stolen from his parents who worked in enslaved conditions long after the abolition of slavery—still hold true for our artist:

My people, it was sad and embittered,

the drumming, to stop the suffering

Hail to pleasure, hail to pleasure.