In the veins of popular woodcut: an archeology of the artistic trajectory of Dila de Caruaru (Brazil, 1937-2019)

Abstract

This project, developed under the regime of international co-curatorship for thesis at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas and the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, focuses on the trajectory and production of Dila de Caruaru (José Soares da Silva, 1937-2019), a poet-engraver recognized by the Lei do Patrimônio Vivo de Pernambuco (2005) as a master holder of the knowledge/know-how of woodcuts associated with cordel pamphlets. The research focuses on the approaches of this artist with agents representing artistic, academic and governmental institutions, from the 1970s on, a paradoxical period in the historiography of cordel: marked by the crisis of the booklet publishing market in northeastern Brazil, concomitant with the institutionalization of studies on the literary genre in the country. In this direction, the research aims to analyze the work of the engraving artist in light of the discursive formations and historical processes that produce it, seeking to dimension to what extent the "borderline" confluences, between discursive fields, collaborated in the consolidation of public policies for cordel and for the community that holds this cultural heritage in the passage from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. The cordelista's creative path through the social gaps will be constituted by mapping his visual production in specialized collections and read from a Foucauldian archeological perspective. The project has documentary research, fieldwork, and the collection of narratives, theoretically subsidized by Oral History, as central methodological resources for its development.