The image insists: Carolina Maria de Jesus as a curatorial gesture

Abstract

The image of Carolina Maria de Jesus has been revisited in recent decades, extending beyond the literary field and entering the realms of art, curatorship, and graphic narratives. This article investigates how the image of a Black woman has been translated as a curatorial, aesthetic, and political symbol through three manifestations focused on the author: her book, a graphic novel, and an exhibition. The analysis examines how these mediums construct and contest the visual and symbolic imagination surrounding the writer. As evident clues, the exhibition functions as both a curatorial gesture and a space of symbolic contestation, legitimizing Carolina as a producer of thought and culture through documents, photographs, and artworks. The graphic novel transposes her literary writing into the visual field, reinforcing the critical and symbolic nature of her work. In both cases, the centrality of Afro-Brazilian creators is observed, who draw on their subjectivities to enact an insurgent vision of the author’s image, a movement made possible for those who can see through the mirror of Oxum, understood as a counterpoint to the mirror of Narcissus. It is concluded that these representations reinscribe Carolina as a critical image and political symbol, capable of bridging past and present, and serving as a key to relearning how to see Brazil through her (re)existence.