TIAGO SANT’ANA – ATLANTIC GLEAM
“At night, if it is to be, the sky entangles a glow. Our heads nearly brush against them. So beautiful in its abundance, like a sky full of stars in mid-February! But, without the moon, in sheer darkness, it is a vast gloom, restraining and grasping.”
João Guimarães Rosa. Grande Sertão: Veredas.
In the Yoruba language, the concept of itutu defines an aesthetic notion marked by a composed and restrained expression, an almost cool demeanor conveyed through the ori, the head, which represents iwa, the ideal character, and from which axé, the vital energy, radiates. Itutu manifests in the steady gaze, the sealed lips, the sober forehead, as much as in gestures of generosity—the highest form of morality in traditional Yoruba terms. Itutu pertains to emotional control, a transcendental equilibrium that pervades the body and ensures the spirit an elevated form of dignity and nobility. The American art historian Robert Farris Thompson wrote that “serenity (…) is part of character, and character aims at communal custom. And as we live generously and discreetly, and demonstrate composure under pressure, our attitude, appearance, and actions gradually acquire a virtual power that becomes real.” It is this state of virtual power, of plenitude and inner peace amid life’s ordinariness, that seems to imbue the figures conceived by Tiago Sant’Ana in his recent works. The concept of itutu informs the state of mind of these characters and, beyond that, guides our perception of the artist’s work itself.
In Atlantic Gleam, Tiago Sant’Ana expands and deepens his research into the elements that construct a memory of the Black Atlantic, facing this time the challenge of envisioning an ideal universe in which the dignity of the Black diaspora is built upon silence, attentiveness, and humility. When I use the word universe, I refer to its Latin origin, a combination of the prefix un, meaning “one,” “single,” and the root vorsum, the perfect participle of vertere, meaning “to turn,” “to revolve,” “to transform.” “All in one” or “everything revolving as one”—the original meaning of “universe”—is precisely what emerges from the series of previously unseen drawings around which the exhibition is organized. In one of them, we can barely discern a body submerged in water, which ripples across the paper’s surface from a face that subtly protrudes like a relief. Whether this face resists drowning or is emerging from the water is an ambiguity that dissolves when observing the other drawings—for instance, one depicting a man breathing slowly, his expression calm, eyes closed, chin slightly raised, or another portraying a man reclining on a square pillow, one hand resting on his head while the other lies over his abdomen. Something unites these figures beyond the metallic texture of their skin, the sculptural quality of their facial topography, or the mystical nature of their expressions, which suggest a state of trance or torpor: these characters seem to establish, in their stillness, a universe of their own, detached from the physical world, manifesting, on one hand, itutu, and on the other, contemplation over action.
Economy is a recurring theme in Tiago Sant’Ana’s work. In his earlier pieces, economy was an entity, an almost spectral presence materialized in the legacies of slave labor, revolving around the production, distribution, and consumption of goods that sustained the colonial elite (symbolized by the whiteness of sugar or freshly laundered clothing). This time, however, economy shifts toward the subjectivity of the Black man in prolonged repose. This is an intelligent maneuver aimed at reversing physical economy—based on labor, execution, and energy expenditure—into a psychic economy centered on inner equilibrium and the exercise of subjectivity. It is crucial to remember that Brazil’s labor rights, established in 1943 with the Consolidation of Labor Laws, largely excluded the population that, after the abolition of slavery in 1888, transitioned to wage labor, which was primarily manual, repetitive, and service-oriented. The right to rest, leisure, and idleness—fundamental premises of full citizenship—was never fully guaranteed to the country’s Black population, whose legal protections have historically been precarious at best, and at worst, actively threatened.
Tiago Sant’Ana’s artistic choices both narrate an idealized everyday life—in which rest replaces struggle, inertia supplants force, and imagination takes precedence over urgency—and promote, with remarkable elegance and astonishing coherence, a reconnection between Black being and its fundamental epistemic apparatus, through an unshakable alliance between history and form. Thus, economy, once a theme, subtly transforms into a plastic solution. The profound sense of composition and spatial organization reveals an artist with extensive studio practice, a microcosm where everything is arranged with absolute control: everything is precisely where it should be, there are no excesses, and each line follows a deliberate path toward its destination, without hesitation, as if formal precision and cleanliness could restore to each character the itutu that has been systematically neutralized and usurped over five centuries. If economy is the management of resources to eliminate waste or excess, then it also manifests in the deep blue color that imbues Sant’Ana’s figures with a sense of certainty intrinsic to iwa (character) and axé (vital energy), enhanced by itutu, whose freshness could have no other hue.
The voluntary repose of Tiago Sant’Ana’s figures revisits a recurring strategy in his work: the force of gravity. The descent of sugar over his head until a white mound covers his body in Refino #2, the pile of white clothes obscuring the face of the figure carrying them in Passar em branco, the artist protecting his sugar shoes to prevent them from dissolving in water, the choice of sugar-based objects (clogs, a boat, an anchor, tiles)—these are just some examples that reveal how weight operates as a language in his practice. If language is any system of symbols, signs, or objects imbued with meaning, then weight, in his work, is the element that allows us to reconnect with the histories lost to the Black Atlantic during the transatlantic slave trade. His figures pull us toward the deepest ground when, for instance, they fix their gaze upon us from below, a gesture that reads as both a challenge and a promise. Yet, as with the semantic reversal of economy, weight similarly shifts from a physical magnitude to an affective experience. The weight of these solitary men draws us into a dive into consciousness itself, while simultaneously, through their melancholic gaze, they evoke a collective history lost at the ocean’s depths. It is there that the tale of the whale with a “dissonant voice” becomes a metaphor for the voices futilely echoing in the darkness of the salty waters, where no light shines, and blue fades into nothingness. It is at the bottom of the ocean that a man with a serene expression finds himself ensnared by a hook. It is at the ocean’s depths that history must be rewritten, resting in the palms of his hands.
In the universe forged by Atlantic Gleam, the brilliance of light that touches the body is the same as that reflected by sugar crystals, hovering over history as a warning to reconsider its terms. Ultimately, this seems to be the silent plea of the man before the sea—or before the dark lens, his face unseen, yet his serene and mystical expression unmistakable.
Renato Menezes, art historian and curator
São Paulo, 27.01.2025
