Thiago Martins de Melo

I never imagined that I would live in a fascist regime in my life. To see indigenous friends, social activists and even an ex-wife being persecuted for defending the struggle of the peoples and the environment. In this dark hour, art and freedom of thought and action, gain a much greater and necessary power to resist the erasure of our struggles and memories. The Latin American artist has no time to fear. In this continent formed in a perverse orgy bathed in mestizo blood, fighting was never an option, but a necessity to survive the imperialist meat grinder.

Making art in northern Brazil and Mexico is, above all, my political decision and the recognition that we are one humanity separated by arbitrarily imposed borders, from the Zapatista reinsurgency in Chiapas to the struggle for existence of the Gamela people of Maranhão. Being an artist in this context is not being able to afford to carry out a purely formal investigation that is alienated from its historical-social context. I believe that art in the global south has a much greater power than in other geopolitical contexts, because it is necessary, it is part of the resistance and it is the struggle for love and social justice. It is certain that other worlds are possible. Art and blood will not be in vain.