Ana Pi

Part act of remembrance and part spell, the work invokes the colonial fiction of History and places it in dialogue with the collapse of reality today. The inevitable architectural transportations that connect the cities of Lisbon in Portugal and Salvador in Brazil indicate precisely the scenario for this act: the whipping post after which Pelourinho, the historic centre of Salvador, is named.

But here this pillar, which was once deployed in the service of turning terror and violence into a spectacle, is now transformed into fertile ground for the execution of epistemic justice. A blessing, a time dedicated to a legitimate reflection regarding the symbolic torture these monuments insist on meting out to this day.

Despite physically occupying the white public sphere, the performance concentrates instead on what is intangible, to avoid breaking apart in a space that was always attached to ruin. A celebration that seeks to return dignity to all those unsubmisse and tenacious black people, who have tried to warn us, who have taught some of us how to listen and to have courage.

Is the smoke the present, the past or the future of the fire?

Ana Pi

Smoke is an action taking place outdoors and in partnership with Ana Sales /Cozinha Afetiva.

This work forms part of the Earthways network, a network of people, practices and knowledge contesting ecological violence and politics of abandonment. This year, Ana Pi took part in one of the network’s regular residency programmes, in Lisbon, with a focus on the city and its transits at different scales (centre/periphery, rural/urban, national/international, past/future, local/global).

About the artist

Ana Pi is a choreographer and image-maker, researcher in urban dances, extemporary dancer, and pedagogue. Her practice is situated among notions of transit, displacement, belonging, overlapping, memory, colours, and ordinary gestures. In 2020 she founded an organisation called NA MATA LAB. NoirBLUE – les déplacements d’une danse (2018) is her first documentary, and VÓS (2011) is her first experimental video work. O BΔNQUETE, COROA, NoirBLUE, DRW2, and Le Tour du Monde des Danses Urbaines en 10 villes are works that articulate choreography, discourse, and installation. CORPO FIRME; danças periféricas, gestos sagrados is a practice she has been developing and sharing since 2010. She is currently developing The Divine Cypher, a project in Haiti supported by the Cisnero Programme for Latinamerican Art at MoMA, New York. She is associated with Dancing Museums and the production office Latitudes Prod. In 2021, she collaborated with Ghyslaine Gau and Annabel Guérédrat on the choreographic exhibition WOMEN, with philosopher Maria Fernando Novo on a series of works called Rádio Concha, and with @Favelinhadance and Chassol on the essay, "Race".