Curated by Paulo Azeco

The afternoon fell in the land of Pindorama, on that seemingly ordinary April 12th of the year 1500. In the surroundings, the inhabitants began to gather, little by little, heading to their huts, kupixawás, hammocks, and the like. If told eternally, this story will indeed end up in the lap of pure fiction. Scientific, of course. With certain doses of television melodrama as well, let's say. But, in the end, the story would reveal an unspeakable and endless episode of colossal violence, pure brutality, kidnapping, theft, farce, and end.

On that fateful afternoon of that inert month of April, it passed in the most serene tranquility, an afternoon lying in an uncorrupted state of calm that had prevailed for all the possible days and corners of Pindorama, since its beginning, since its first inhabitants, since those we don't even know when; or when 'when' no longer counts for telling any time. There has always been much Brazil before Brazil, we know.

Playful in repeating their daily routines of mischief and other games far and wide, a small group of Pataxó boys and girls - an indigenous ethnic group, most of whose members resided in the southern state of Bahia, where the city of Porto Seguro is today - took small steps toward the stone mountain that fascinated them so much.
Later baptized as Monte Pascoal, its name would refer to the Easter period, a Catholic tradition (of course, who else?) by the malodorous Portuguese men who landed there from beyond the seas, right on that fateful day, April 12th. A shock and a roar, paradise taken in a flash. The horizon line, once always so clear, so perfectly straight above the vastness of the sea, was blurred that day by shades of black, gray, brown, and even dirtier ones, discoloring the sky in a palette of red, black, thick with greed, and pregnant with smoke.
Less and less distant, the 19 Portuguese ships that first landed on these lands caused astonishment and wide-eyed looks. And, above all, fear of the encounter, of death, of impossibility, of the obstructed smile, of disease, and power. As the Pataxó community gathers almost entirely on the strip of sand awaiting the feared landing of those indecipherable white men, the children did not hesitate to run into the forest, fleeing, hiding momentarily in bushes, tree tops, camouflaging themselves among the robust leaves of that rich and generous vegetation - what more would they need? They asked themselves...
In the midst of the crowd, the kids ran like small, fierce, fast, atrocious jaguars, linking together what was happening. One of them, mocking his friend, shouted: "You look like a corn kernel, dude..! Running, all I see is a little grain, small, small, it seems that with so much heat suddenly this corn pops and spreads, sand, mud, grass, the white man and the native indigenous, entrenched, foolish, with nothing to do. It's going to turn into popcorn!"
Well, quietly, first just for himself and then, as in a collective corner, organized in small circles, one of the tribe's leaders, a 77-year-old Pataxó elder, whispered: "there is life after Pindorama, Pindorama is us. There is life after Pindorama. Pindorama is ours, Pindorama is here...", he repeated, stumbling, stiff, breathless and hopeless, staring into the forest, where the green almost gleamed in the fire-like yellow that the sky could not contain in shining. "Pindorama is ours," he mumbled, now practically inaudible.

The above prologue does not open this text by coincidence or without a somewhat singular reason. We know that long before any idea of the "discovery" of the land on which we tread and that, just over 500 years ago, we agreed to call BRAZIL, there were already people here. However, this temporal marker of April 12, 1500, chosen by hegemonic Western historical narratives worldwide, is relevant.
Even though these narratives have been undergoing a sharp and keen process of revision, being read against the grain and allowing certain agents and certain historical episodes to reveal themselves today before us, the reverse of how we knew them in a first school contact (mostly). However, within the narrative of Pedro Álvares Cabral's "discovery" - uh-huh, let's agree for a moment with the hilarious fallacy...! - there is a fact that deserves a highlight in neon lights with blinking lights. Even though the territory around here was not yet demarcated (hence, we think about how the idea of territory and borders are true abstractions!) on the ground we commonly call BAHIA.
It is not a small thing to think about the historical role played by indigenous people (Pataxós and many others, certainly, from diverse ethnicities scattered across our land and forests), in the way they face with impavidness and a joyful fear shouting within themselves, our new friends from overseas. The astonishment was so great, the impossibility of communication so vast, the instinctive, carnal desire and attraction were so great, but nothing was as immensely immense as the thirst for power and the arrogance of the European white man.
The rest, from here on, is history unfolding like a long Moebius strip that would cross the entire territory of the state we now call BAHIA and only afterward would delicately unfold, drawing itself through the red sand upward and downward. Pindorama wanted to be great, and there was no turning back. Whose land it would be now and under which dynamics it would be shared, twisted, we will soon understand. Compulsorily accept. The African diaspora, vile and ruthless, would tear through the planet's oceans on routes that would benefit the movements of the boats that decided to sail from the old world. Between the Gulf of Benin and the Bay of All Saints, surprisingly still despite all the suffering, one could hear singing, sometimes overlaid with weeping. Those who came from there and settled in All Saints brought with them in the pockets of their torn garments or kept close to their chests or clenched in their hands, secrets, desires, memories, magic, enchantments, small beings, people who came from a metaphorical or real mansion, inscribed in the soul, in the eye, in the soul of the eye, in the skin, in the body, in the body of the skin, and in the skin of the bone.

Silently, they invented Bahia, and - behold! - without suspecting, they invented Brazil. Bahia and Brazil. Between them, they agreed to call the two lands whatever they wanted, warriors tearing through oceans, now living in salty water in their lungs and stomachs. Bahia is the whole world. Only Bahia knows what is good.

***

POPCORN, aptly titled to inaugurate the space at the NONADA gallery in Salvador, brings together the production - in a continuous regime of transformation of its assembly and exhibition design - of more than 40 artists, coming from the Southeast and Northeast, but also from many other corners of our country. The curatorial program that will guide the exhibitions and activations held in this space (and outside it) throughout the next year was ambiguously named "Régua e Compasso" (Ruler and Compass), based, of course, on Gilberto Gil's song "Aquele Abraço" (That Hug), composed in 1969. If Master Gil affirmed that it was his Bahia that had prepared him for the world with the two trivial objects, capable of allowing him to draw straight lines, circumferences, simple paths, crooked paths, obtuse, labyrinthine, but invariably liberating, it is Bahia that can still reveal to us today the Brazil that comes after Brazil. Well, there is no redundancy in this statement, nor is it necessary to keep it a secret: there was Brazil before Brazil; there is Brazil after Brazil.

Not less important - perfectly by the opposite and the contrary of it! - popcorn, as a sign and food, a religious and ritualistic symbol, exposes all its possible semantic dimensions already listed in any dictionary ever scribbled. Here, popcorn is the energy that, almost palpably, establishes conversations between paintings, photographs, videos, sculptures, performances, invisible beings, and everything else that makes up this exhibition. Everything is jumping like popcorn in the hot fire, in front of us, here and now. And if Bahia is the true land of carnival, what beauty is there in naming the lively, pulsating, black, white, dazzling mass as... POPCORN! Popcorn jumping on the asphalt, falling in love, getting lost in the crowd, mutants in search of a new generation... which will surely come.

In the yards, in celebration and in light, the rites have. POPCORN. The kings like popcorn, the queens even more, the trans, the queer, the non, the bi, the mona, the ken, the men, the ném, the patrician, and the miss from febem, the all-creates and the playba are all the same, my dear. With permission and blessings, we dare to set the ruler and the compass in this land of saintliness, strength, windiness, and mildness.
If Bahia is the whole world, only Bahia knows what is good.