Displacements, encounters, and distancing are fertile substrates for Aislan Pankararu’s work. The artist’s biography reveals several significant movements: from the Pankararu community of Petrolândia, in the Pernambuco countryside, to Brasília, the federal capital; and then from Brasília to São Paulo, where he meets the Pankararu who live in the Real Parque community. These displacements imply a partial distancing from the Pankararu culture and a subsequent re-encounter with it, which is crossed by other experiences.
His initial output takes up the practice of drawing and features representations of the praiás – garments made of straw that constitute the physical manifestation of the Encantados, entities worshipped by the Pankararu. These entities dwelled in the waterfalls that surrounded this people’s territory, but which were destroyed by the floods resulting from the construction of the Itaparica dam on the São Francisco River in 1988. The mystery that was key to the Pankararu’s practical and symbolic organization began to seek other manifestations.
Moving away from figurative representation, Aislan paints shapes inspired by the traditional body painting of his people, using white clay on unconventional kraft paper – a support that restores the chromatic relationship between white paint and dark skin. Balls, circular shapes, and crosses – part of the graphic repertoire of Pankararu painting – are repeated in a cosmos of their own. You can observe and get carried away by the patterns that are formed and seem to move over the surface of paper, cotton, leather, or linen.
Aislan’s artistic output is also an exaltation of the Indigenous people of the Brazilian Northeast and their territory. This is revealed in the organic forms, the branching that suggests blooms, the twists and the spiky, thorn-like lines that recall caatinga vegetation. The artist’s experience in medical classes and laboratories informs his visuality with microscopic images, which endow traditional graphic signs with membranes, flagella, and fimbria. In addition to white on brown, he incorporates colors from other peoples, resulting in a complex scene of colorful and vibrant elements in an agitated state. More recently, Aislan’s work has also unfolded in the three-dimensional field, with materials such as straw and ceramics, taking on forms similar to those of his paintings.
His production resists simple explanations, as it establishes a strong presence and forces us to be together. The result of multiple encounters, Aislan Pankararu’s work superimposes experiences and restores the space of art to the field of mystery – often rejected by hegemonic ways of living and thinking.