English

English Português

Category: Our Voices

Can the Brazilian Northeast be contemporary?

O Tira-gosto is a space for encounter at Casa Oxente — a moment for informal yet meaningful conversations about art, culture, and belonging. In this special edition, we welcomed philosopher, professor, and curator Filipe Campello for a necessary and urgent reflection: Can the Northeast be contemporary?
The text below was read at the opening of the event. It is both a provocation and an invitation. It speaks of borders — physical, symbolic, and discursive — of the limitations of categories like “folk art,” and of the desire to transform the present into a space of listening and reinvention. It is also a personal attempt to give shape to the restlessness that flows through the Casa Oxente project.
Good evening.
At a time when borders are closing again — when countries retreat into themselves, discourses grow more radical, and the world seems less and less porous — to speak of art, of culture, and of belonging becomes a political act.
We live in times of acceleration and instability. Climate and financial crises, forced human displacements, wars, the rise of the far right, and the erosion of shared life — and of life in common.
In the face of all this, what is contemporary art for? What is its role in times like these? And what does it mean to be contemporary? Is it simply to live in the present moment? Or is it to recognize this moment — and become implicated in it? To accept instability as a condition? Or to resist the temptation of repetition?
And if this is what it means to be contemporary, then what does it mean to make contemporary art? Is it to produce thought in a world in convulsion? To create from the fracture? To question the symbolic order of things? To invent ways of being in the world that don’t yet have names?
Can the Brazilian Northeast be contemporary?
This is not a chronological question. It is not about time. It’s about agency, presence, and transformation.
Falamos dessa tal “identidade nordestina” — entre muitas aspas — tantas vezes representada como um bloco único, estático, folclorizado. Ora exótico, ora miserável. Ora símbolo de resistência, ora de carência. Mas sempre figéeas the French would say: frozen.
Who is identity for?
If an identity cannot unsettle the system that frames it, it becomes a stamp. A brand. A commodity. Being “included” is not enough — your presence must transform the space into which you arrive.
The struggle is not only for recognition. It is for displacement. For a reconfiguration of what we call art, center, and value.
I’ll admit: even for me, naming all of this is not easy. Is Casa Oxente a space for art? For folk art? The term “folk art,” which I used for so long, has begun to trouble me. Yes, it carries stories and affections — but also limitations.
The distinction between popular art and contemporary art is not a chronological barrier. It's one of power. And that's why it needs to be crossed.
Today, we have the pleasure of welcoming Filipe Campello — philosopher, professor, and curator — someone who invites us to cross borders: geographic, conceptual, and institutional. We want to talk about the right to change, to self-represent, to contradict what was given to us. About the Northeast as a site of critical and aesthetic production. About art as a living language — and identity as a provocation.
Because if the world out there insists on building walls, here we will keep crossing borders. And maybe this is our most sincere way of existing in time: like those who open paths — and invite others to cross with us.
by Wilame Lima
(Opening text for ‘Tira-gosto’ with Filipe Campello: The Northeast on the Route of Contemporary Art - 22 May 2025)

23/05/2025
The House on the Mountain

At Casa Oxente, we open our doors not only to artworks, but to memories. In the gatherings, soirées, and conversations we host, there’s always a moment when silence takes hold — a pause so that words can settle.
The following text was read at the opening of Tira-gosto with Manuel Mendonça, and was born as a personal — and perhaps unfinished — attempt to answer two simple yet difficult questions: Who am I? And what is Casa Oxente?
It’s a personal story, marked by memory, loss, rediscovery, and transformation — much like the story of Casa Oxente itself.
Publishing it here is an extension of that act of sharing, so that these words may reach those who couldn’t be with us, and continue to echo among all those who build homes through affection, listening, and remembrance.
The House on the Mountain
One day, when I was a child, an aunt invited me to a painting class.
I was afraid of her, but I said yes — I really wanted to learn to paint.
In my mind, I would paint a Wonderful House on top of a green mountain.
The sky would be blue, there’d be a bright yellow sun, and the sea below.
On the first day, the teacher said:
“Today, you’re going to paint little painting squares.”
And that’s what we did. Squares on the second day. Squares on the third.
By the fourth, I didn’t go back.
That house began to fade. It was lost. Forgotten.
Years later, I found myself in a maid’s quarters at the back of an apartment in São Paulo.
That wasn’t a home. It was a room to sleep in. I remembered my childhood project, unsure if that house could ever really exist.
Time passed. I got married. We had a dog, a daughter…
And without realizing it, I had been building that house all along.
Life was happening, and I had neither the time nor the awareness to notice what I was creating.
In 2020, I realized it had been months since I’d spoken to a dear friend.
I tried to call, sent messages. Nothing.
I searched his name online. What came up was: “murdered.”
My spine went cold.
And the pain — what to do with it?
I turned to art. To photography.
And one day, I took a self-portrait: I was crashing violently into a swimming pool.
It was the image of my friend—or maybe of myself.
I could have been him.
Just one more queer man from the margins, lost.
Like so many others.
But the day I took that photo, I found the door to a house.
I opened it and found my way back — to many houses. The homes of my great-aunts.
The ones who sheltered and protected me.
If not for art, I would never have returned.
So… who am I?
What is Casa Oxente?
Casa Oxente is also a space for commerce.
But we don’t just sell art.
We sell narratives.
We sell perspectives.
We sell points of view.
Here, you can also pay by listening.
With affection.
With memory.
We come here to remember those who didn’t always have the chance to speak.
To look at a piece and think: “That reminds me of a story…”
Whether joyful or sorrowful.
I can’t explain Casa Oxente in five minutes.
I just know it feels like a grandmother’s home. A great-aunt’s home.
A place where stories stay alive.
All I want is for you to leave here enchanted — not just by other people’s stories, but by your own.
As Viviane Mosé said: "We will only be loved if we are loveable.”
So let us be loveable. Let us be gentle. Let us be naive.
May we turn the whole world
into a house on a mountain,
with a blue ocean at its feet.
Thank you.
by Wilame Lima
(Read at “Tira-gosto with Manuel Mendonça: Art Within Everyone’s Reach”, May 15, 2025)

21/05/2025
Between Times: Reflections that Inaugurate a Soiree

Cover image: Illustration entitled “Hungry”, by Juliana Fernandes. Part of the book “Essay on the Now”, by the poet Tiago Fernandes.
At Casa Oxente, we believe that art is also about encounters, words and listening. soirees and conversation circles that we promote are spaces for sharing, celebration and thought — and often begin with a text that provokes, inspires or simply invites people to be present.
The text below, entitled “Impossible now”, was read at the opening of the Sarau on May 8th, with the poet Tiago Fernandes, who presented his book “Ensaio Sobre o Agora”. The following poem was written especially for this moment, as a poetic attempt to capture that which, by nature, escapes: time, the instant, the now.
Publishing it here is a gesture of continuity — so that the words echo beyond the night of the soiree and find new listeners, new times, new readers.
Impossible now
I think about the impossibility of now.
Of this illusion of time, which dissolves when touched, and which enchants poets, priests and philosophers.
Consider infinity: that which never ends, as there is always the possibility of a step further.
So is the now — impossible to pin down, because when you try to capture it, it has already become something else.
So where does now live? In just one second?
And what pulses between the seconds — the microseconds, the thousandths, the infinitesimal instants?
How many times fit into time, if at each instant it is possible to go beyond?
Unattainable, the now is also yesterday and tomorrow — simultaneous, jumbled together.
Therefore, I challenge anyone who says that living in the present is a possibility.
That's why I live here and there. I move forward, I retreat, I go up, I go down.
I stagger along the road of life — for centers are infinite and unattainable.
I like the time of physics, where there is no distinction between past, present and future.
At this time, what matters is the body, the space — and the positions it occupies along the way.
What matters is always the trajectory…
Naturally, if the now is impossible and infinite, we write about it in the hope of containing it.
But it escapes us.
He is risky, treacherous.
Maybe we should make a God out of now.
Build temples. Raise towers.
Writing books — with chapters, verses and dogmas.
Light fires. Heat ovens. Sacrifice the moment.
And then we will deny him worship.
We will make revolutions.
And we will all be atheists and agnostics from now on.
by Wilame Lima
(Read at the opening of the Sarau da Casa Oxente on May 8, 2025)

09/05/2025