The Arizona State Library Distinctive Collections currently houses more than 150 woodcuts, artists’ books, and small press books from Brazil. In the exhibit Shoestring Productions: Brazilian Storytelling through Contemporary Woodcuts, Artists' Books, and Small Press Books (1997-2021), the ASU Library is highlighting a small part of this collection to feature the work of storytellers who use their hands to bring forth narratives about modern life in Brazil. Featured here are woodblock engravers, printers, seamsters, collage artists, and poets.
The books featured here are a mixture of handmade and small-run productions that draw together illustration and poetry. Handmade books have had a place in popular culture in Brazil since the 16th century, and they continue to play an important role today. As artists’ books, they often combine the literary with the visual arts and place an emphasis on integrating illustrations into their narratives.
The artists featured in the ASU Library exhibit use a variety of techniques to hand print and hand sew the books. Modern books often incorporate photocopy and collage technology as well as thread, dried flowers, and various other objects embedded in the paper. Some of the artists use skills that they may have learned from relatives or from working as carpenters, brickmakers, potters, and printers, whereas others trained in MFA programs in Brazil, and the exhibit showcases a wide range of both traditional and innovative methods for making and appreciating paper and book forms.
In particular, this exhibit features a number of cordels, a uniquely Brazilian genre that tells contemporary stories through the use of poetry, prose, and illustrations. This style of storytelling via poetry and song took root among indigenous and Afro-Brazilian poets in Northeastern Brazil after being introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th century. The name cordel is derived from the Portuguese word for rope, corda, and refers to the traditional practice of hanging the pamphlets on a piece of string in a marketplace. Intended to be small, quickly produced, and inexpensive, the original cordels were made with woodblock prints, but modern versions can combine original artwork with poetry in a copy machine reproduction. Any theme can be addressed in a cordel, but the genre has traditionally been a way to celebrate life and critique public policies.
The exhibit highlights the work of the contemporary cordel author and artist Jarid Arraes. A poet and writer, Jarid Arraes was born in Juazeiro do Norte, in Northeastern Brazil, in 1991. She was born into a family of cordel writers and is the daughter of Hamurábi Batista and the granddaughter of Abraão Batista. Arraes has won an Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte Literature award for “Redemoinha da hot” (Swirl on a Hot Day). She has published three books of poetry and more than seventy cordels. Arraes focuses on bringing the stories of black Brazilian women to the cordel form by introducing subjects such as motherhood, the body, lesbian lifestyles, stylized hair, sports, and activism.
For more information about Jarid Arraes, visit her website: https://jaridarraes.com/.
For more information about cordels visit the Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov/.
The exhibit Shoestring Productions: Brazilian Storytelling through Contemporary Woodcuts, Artists’ Books, and Small Press Books (1997-2021) will run from October 22, 2021, to January 18, 2022, in the lobby of the Design and the Arts Library at ASU, Tempe. For more information about the exhibit or the Brazilian Artists’ books at the ASU Library, contact Seonaid Valiant, Curator for Latin American Studies, Seonaid.Valiant@asu.edu.
--Seonaid Valiant, Curator for Latin American Studies, Distinctive Collections