In November 2018, I had the opportunity to meet with Angelica Dass, the Brazilian photographer, humanitarian and founder of Humanæ, at the Madison. The Madison is an artist cultural gathering place in the Glenville community of Cleveland, Ohio. Angelica is one of eight artists – five local and three international participating in the two month Creative Fusion residency. She has developed the 456 Project which focuses on the role environment plays in orchestrating sexual violence. I sat down with Angelica, Mordecai Cargill, co-founder of Third Space Action Lab and Angelica’s assistant at the Madison and talked briefly about 456, which is funded by The Cleveland Foundation. Angelica took my picture for the project; she plans to photograph 456 women and men and create a site-specific installation in the Glenville community. Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion artists will use data to reveal social and environmental issues.
In 2012 Humanæ went viral on the internet with 150 photos. Over the next six years Humanæ showcased in Brazil, Spain, Uruguay, Norway, Argentina, Netherlands and 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 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 this socially constructed restraints. Further exposure lead up to the April 2018 publication of National Geographic Magazine Special Issue: Black and White. The article addressed the idea race as a social construct, rather than a biological one. Humanæ began as a pursuit after she photographed 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 a myriad of human colors from 18 countries.
Angelica’s portraits are magical, and there is a an obvious connection made between the photographer and her subjects. Along with the wonderful variety of color shades and lighting, a few individuals in the otherwise minimalist portraits are wearing personal accessories which give a sense of their individuality. What is most aesthetically present is the manner in which 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. The collage of colored squares is mirrored in both works.
“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,” Angelica Dass.
Angelica’s father is Afro-Brazilian, 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.
“This project was born almost as if I were looking at my reflection,” she said. “I always say Humanæ is 4,000 self-portraits.”
Humanæ was chosen to be on the cover of the March/April 2015 issue of Foreign Affairs, “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.
The recent publicized event that occurred in Angelica’s country of Brazil, exposing the newly appointed president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, who campaigned on a plan to privatize vast swaths of the Amazon. Brazil has over 720 indigenous reserves which thrive in the rain-forest. Bolsonaro is noted as coming forth making demands on these groups with “minorities have to adapt to the majority, or simply 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 which hung on the outside of the Kingsport Tennessee State Theater. Kingsport has a racial makeup of the city of 93.32% White and 11.2% African American. Brenda White Wright, one of Kingsport 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 and we all have something to offer to one another. Humanæ represents that hope.”
PANTONE® and other Pantone trademarks are the property of, and are used with the written permission of, Pantone LLC. PANTONE Color identification is solely for artistic purposes and not intended to be used for specification. All rights reserved.
