The Repassos Exhibition and the Modern Interest in the Popular

Abstract

The exhibition Repassos – Edmar and the Weavers of the Triângulo Mineiro was the culmination of a body of work marked by an accumulation of content and dialogues that confronted diverse theoretical-methodological, technical, and technological positions, presenting a stark reality of poverty that continued to reverberate across the following decades. The project presented at MASP shaped an investigation into the modes of making craftsmanship associated with a practice rooted in the region’s seventeenth-century colonial processes and which endured, up to the latter half of the twentieth century, as an expression of cultural resistance. Drawing on authors such as Lina Bo Bardi and her understanding of phenomena like pre-craftsmanship, this study aims to examine the exhibition as an opportunity for understanding Brazilian underdevelopment and as an alternative to both capitalist logic and hegemonic forms of modernity. The methodology articulated historical research and documentary analysis, combining ethnography with a technical study of making. The results indicate that, through the cooperative work between the artist and the weavers, a decisive opportunity was created for the preservation of knowledge and for interpretations relevant to contemporary theoretical debates, offering perspectives for the production of forms of knowledge committed to revising the structural hierarchies of Brazilian culture.