Re-drawn histories: visualizing analogies between the present and the past – urban peripheries, black resistance and female voices in the work of Marcelo D’Salete

Abstract

In his graphic novels, São Paulo artist and Visual Arts professor Marcelo D’Salete illustrates decisive moments of Afro- -Brazilian history and the life conditions of young Afro-Brazilians in the present, tracing analogies between now and then in his books Noite luz (2008), Encruzilhada (2011), Cumbe (2014) and Angola Janga (2017). In this contribution, I intend to show how D’Salete – on the threshold between fiction and reality – (re)draws a portrait of the urban periphery, on the one hand, and the history of Palmares, on the other hand, creating a type of “inverted continuity” between his first two works focused on São Paulo street life and his more recent graphic narratives in which he identifies the root for today’s social inequality in the poorly digested history of slavery in Brazil. In a third step, I am going to discuss the role and potential of the voice of women who are not being forgotten in D’Salete’s work.