The Black Diaspora Archive at LLILAS Benson has acquired work by leading Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino (b. 1967) to mark the launch of Archiving Black América, an initiative that acknowledges and redresses violence and anti-blackness in the archive.
In her “Assentamento” series, Paulino imagines Black women as the seeds and roots of Brazilian society. Black women’s suffering and achievements have “settled” the land and birthed other universes that continue to oppose colonialism’s world order.
In Portuguese, assentamento means “settlement," or the laying of a foundation, land occupation, or the act of recording information. It can also refer to the ritual of turning the earth into sacred ground in Candomblé religious practice, creating space for connection with divine figures known as orixás. Paulino’s work offers us assentamento as a form of Black archival production, and dismantles long-standing and powerful regimes that normalize antiblack violence.
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