Which
skin colour are you? The human swatch chart
that confronts racism
In 1933, in a book called The
Masters and the Slaves,
the Brazilian anthropologist Gilberto Freyre wrote: “Every
Brazilian, even
the light-skinned, fair-haired one, carries
about him on his soul, when not on soul and body alike,
the
shadow, or at least the birthmark, of the aborigine or
the negro.” This was forefront in the mind of the
French
artist Pierre David when he moved to Brazil in 2009.
“When I was in the streets, I could see so
many skin
colours”, he says. He decided to make a human colour
chart, like one you would find in the
paint section of B&Q
shop, but showing the gradations and shades of our skin
colour. The project,
called Nuancier or “swatches”, was
first shown at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Salvador –
Bahia, and is
now on show in his native France. “Brazil
has a better attitude to skin colour than other developed
nations”, he says. “There's no doubt, because the concept
of skin colour difference was recognised
very early in their
history. Now, it even appears on identity documents.”
Yet Nuancier, David says, is still a critique of
racism, in Brazil and around the world. “This
work
may seem provocative – to classify men by colour,
to industrially produce the colour of an individual
so
it can be store-bought. But this is a demonstration of
the commodification of bodies. It denounces
racism
anywhere it is found in the world.”
SEYMOUR, T. Disponível
em: www.theguardian.com. Acesso em: 21 out. 2015 (adaptado).
O artista francês Pierre David, ao evidenciar seu
encantamento com a diversidade de cores de peles no
Brasil, no projeto Nuancier,
também