The world needs Humanæ desperately in 2025.
In November of 2018, I had the opportunity to meet with Angelica Dass, the Brazilian photographer, humanitarian, and founder of Humanæ, at the Madison. The Madison, on E. 105 St, was an artist cultural gathering place in the Glenville community of Cleveland, Ohio. Angelica was one of eight artists – five local and three international participated in the two-month Creative Fusion residency, sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation. I sat down with Angelica, Mordecai Cargill, co-founder of Third Space Action Lab and Angelica’s assistant at the Madison, and talked about Humanae. Ron Shelton, artist and founder of HAF
In 2012, Humanæ went viral on the internet with 150 photos. Over the past thirteen years, Humanæ has showcased in Brazil, Spain, Uruguay, Norway, Argentina, the Netherlands, and the USA. In 2014, Angelica was nominated by Time Magazine as one of the Brazilian photographers to follow. The world became aware of Angelica after her 2016 TED talks. Angelica eloquently opened this talk and then introduced a scrim projection of four color squares in yellow, red, black, and white to stress that no one belongs to any of these four colors. Yet, our society continues to qualify us with these socially constructed restraints. Further exposure led to the April 2018 publication of the National Geographic Magazine Special Issue: Black and White. The article addressed the idea of race as a social construct rather than a biological one. Humanæ began as a pursuit after photographing herself, her then-husband, and their families to show this medley. She’d match a strip of pixels from their noses to a color card from Pantone. Humanæ has composed 4,000 portraits in various human colors from 18 countries.
Angelica’s portraits are magical, and an unmistakable connection is made between the photographer and her subjects. Along with the variety of color shades and lighting, a few individuals in the otherwise minimalist portraits often wear personal accessories that give a sense of individuality. What is most aesthetically present is how the individual color blocks are positioned in the frame. The more portrait images in the collage, the more it resembles a Cubist painting. It has cubism attributes, which remind me of Broadway Boogie-Woogie, a painting of the city grid of Manhattan by Piet Mondrian completed in 1943; Humanæ, on the other hand, is a human grid of skin tones.
“I understand photography as a dialogue from personal to global; like a game in which the personal and social codes are put at stake to be reinvented, a continuous flow between the photographer and the photographed, a bridge between masks and identities. For this reason, I raise my work as a tool of exploration, questioning and searching for identity, for each own and others. This project was born almost as if I were looking at my reflection. I always say Humanæ is 4,000 self-portraits,” Angelica Dass, Humanæ
Angelica’s father is Afro-Brazilian and was adopted by a white family. Her mother is of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian descent. Angelica has navigated the complexities of identity her whole life.
Humanæ was chosen to be on the cover of the March/April 2015 Foreign Affairs issue, “The trouble with race. “The article takes a look at the increased racial tensions that have been the center of American politics, but how this story of race and ethnic division is a global one and explores the racial issue in comparative and historical perspectives.
A past publicized event in Angelica’s country of Brazil exposed the former president, Jair Bolsonaro, who campaigned to privatize vast swaths of the Amazon. Brazil has over 720 indigenous reserves that thrive in the rainforest. At that time, Bolsonaro was noted as coming forth making demands on these groups, claiming minorities have to adapt to the majority or disappear.
Humanæ is a tool to address our planet’s current growth of nationalism, fascism, and neo-nazism. In 2017, Humanæ was installed as a 40 x 50ft canvas that hung outside the Kingsport Tennessee State Theater. Kingsport has a racial makeup of 93.32% White and 11.2% African American. Brenda White Wright, one of Kingsport’s residents, comments on Angelica’s work in her city: “My hope is that someday people will come to know each other as humans first. And if we can ever get to a place to see that we’re all uniquely different and special, we all have something to offer one another. Humanæ represents that hope.”
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