Black Feminism and the Feeling of the Sublime in the Performance Merci Beaucoup, Blanco!
Black Feminism and the Feeling of the Sublime in the Performance Merci Beaucoup, Blanco!

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents a criticism of the performance Merci Beaucoup, Blanco! by Michelle Mattiuzzi and the self-reflection on it published in the 32nd Biennial of São Paulo – “Live Uncertainty” (2016) – entitled Written Performance Photography Experiment. To this end, we emphasize the performance’s formal elements alongside aspects of the history of racist practices and theories in Brazil, in addition to the official historiography concerning the black population, which contextualize the feelings of pain and horror impregnating both the artist’s personal experience and her performance.Accordingly, the elements of this performance that can incite feelings of pleasure in the observer such as the resistance of black women and their political representation are analyzed in the field of art and culture. Lastly, to conclude, this paper argues about the possibilities of the performance’s fruition. This argument is based on the artist's text and certain constituent arguments of the feeling of the sublime’s concept, as presented by Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant and Jean-François Lyotard.Considering an analogy with the aesthetics of the sublime, it is argued that Merci Beaucoup Blanco! gravitates in the atmosphere of horror, pain and shock, recalling/suggesting feelings of racial violence and discrimination still existing in Brazil. This performance of a black woman against racist oppression also constitutes an act of resistance of the artist, capable of awakening feelings of pleasure in their watchers. The public then moves from shock, pain and horror to contentment of the political consciousness of race, gender, and class.

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