Inaicyra Falcão

Know more about Inaicyra Falcão’s project for the 35th Bienal here.

The historical and artistic being of Inaicyra Falcão could constitute the transgression of concepts – such as erudite, lyrical – or of what is accepted as possible. Her ancestrality, as motor and inspiration, and the choreographies of her world – broad, transnational, and diasporic – break with the rigidity of academia and art. From her poetic voice, other sounds could emerge, but what blooms is an ancestral song. Loose and liberated, her body exhales memories of ancient and refined movements, repeated millennia ago in human daily life, and of sacred divinities, which can still be observed today, when they are on Earth.

As Inaicyra’s art shows, the impossible happens when the power of the body, of the physical explosion provoked by the need for movement, is present, even in sacred inaicyra falcão deities. Therefore, for the artist, all bodies are endowed with memories, ancestral inscriptions, which reveal themselves in the body consciousness forged in tradition. This movement is cultural, collective memory, but, above all, it results from our personal histories and from crossings that inhabit the bodies of black people of the diaspora. Personal freedom, therefore, depends on this body being in movement.

From this perspective, education would be another path to autonomy, but, at this point, through dance. The recognition of each individual story, the embracing of conscious or dormant memories, would be part of this learning, which runs counter to the knowledge of repetitions, of what is considered harmonious or erudite. This was the path found by Inaicyra to bring African heritage into the curricula. Far from meaning being stuck in a sealed past, her perception of the world and of art reveals change, dynamism, and constant transformation of ancestral movements and songs. Thus, Inaicyra Falcão defines herself as an “articulator of universes,” of multidimensional worlds, which she connects to the body and voice.

luciana brito
translated from Portuguese by philip somervell

Inaicyra Falcão (Salvador, BA, Brazil. Lives in Salvador) is a lyric singer, educator and researcher committed to the diffusion of African and Afro-Brazilian culture. The possibility of identification of the sacred in the ordinary and the ordinary in the sacred, the reiteration of personal history in the livingness of tradition, and the re-elaboration of this tradition originated in contemporary society are constituent elements of the transcendental pedagogy in art-education proposed by her. Her main work is Body and Ancestry: A multicultural Proposal for Art-Dance-Education (2021). Her artistic work includes the album Okan Awa: Cânticos da tradição Iorubá e sementes ancestrais (2002), besides publications and performances that contribute to the understanding of the work of the scenic artist, organic and plural, anchored in the dynamics of traditional and contemporary culture.