Quilombola Museology as a Land/Memory Care: the Iaia Procopia Museum experience
Presentation by Mirella Maria on Qilombola Museology at the Feminist Methodologies Symposium.
The lecture focuses on concepts of Quilombola Museology and Community Museums to discuss curatorial practices at Iaia Procopia Museum, a political and cultural place that crosses gender, race, geographical and museological discussions to exhibit the material and immaterial culture produced in the Kalunga territory of Goiás, Brazil. Ms. Iaia is 89 years old and collaborates with the community to maintain the museum in her house as a place to preserve the Kalunga people’s memory. Also, the physical house symbolically represents the structural struggle of a rooted resistance place formed by maroon people along the plantation centuries, expanding today through the Goián Land and the Kalunga descendants.
Mirella Maria (1990) is a Brazilian visual artist, art historian, and researcher. She has a degree in Visual Arts, and a master's in Art Education from Universidade Júlio de Mesquita Filho - UNESP. Mirella has developed projects as an art educator and consultant in spaces such as Afro Brazil Museum, Moreira Salles Institute, Modern Art Museum-MAM SP, Assis Chateaubriand Museum- MASP SP, and the Sparks School (South Africa). As a visual artist, she participated in the XII Bienal do Mercosul. Currently, she is a Ph.D. Student in Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison(US). Her research focuses on the Visualities of the Global South, crossing geography, museology, material culture studies, and racial and gender issues.