Sit-in - croqui, 2021, ink on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm.

Sit-in

Sitting on the floor, the security guards will stay in a circumspect position, denying the possibility of discussion with other people, and they will not stand up until their shifts are over.

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Sit-in were non-violent tactics widely used by African-Americans during the 1960s. In this context of racial segregation in the US, black men and women would go to establishments that didn't serve them, sit down in the available seats, ask for something on sale and, when they were told no, remain seated, as if waiting to be served, enduring insults and physical violence until they were removed from their seats and arrested by the police. This movement contributed for the eradication of racial segregation policies and, today, sit-down protests have been carried out by other social movements, occupying other commercial spaces and even the ground of streets and open spaces.

In an excerpt of the text Banzo e preguiça: notas sobre a melancolia tropical, Leila Danziger looks at some of Debret's watercolors and drawings that were not published in France. In them, figures of squalid black people, sitting on the ground, half-naked, with their heads looking towards the ground and their arms and legs crossed, as if protecting them in their retreat, are correlated by the author to banzo. This is a medical category from the time of the slave trade meaning a melancholy that plagued enslaved Africans, since they were far from their native territories, and which lead them to suicide, voluntary starvation, refusal to work and, consequently, the bodily inactivity recorded by Debret.

In view of these two cases of sitting as a political problem, Amador e Jr. Segurança Patrimonial Ltda. propose that their security guards remain seated on the exhibition space floor, in a circumspect position, denying the possibility of discussion with other people. Placing themselves as if in a sit-in - and thus claiming an absurd posture in the exercise of their vigilance - even though they are in an evident melancholic isolation due to the position of their bodies, in which they can protect nothing but themselves within the working context of property security. The body as the heritage to be safeguarded.

35ª Bienal de São Paulo - coreografias do impossível [curadoria: Diane Lima, Grada Kilomba, Hélio Menezes, Manuel Borja-Villel; assistência de curadoria: Matilde Outeiro, Sylvia Monasterios, Tarcisio Almeida], 2023, Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo, São Paulo, SP [fotos: Levi Fanan / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo]

heróis nunca celebram vilões - heróis apenas celebram vilões [exposição individual de Igor Vidor], 2018, Galeria Leme, São Paulo, SP [fotos: Gabriela Gava]

46º Salão de Arte Contemporânea Luiz Sacilotto [seleção: Luise Weiss, Paulo Pasta, Rubens Pontes], 2018, Salão de Exposições, Casa do Olhar Luiz Sacilotto, Santo André, SP [fotos dos autores]

Saguão de Arte, 2017, Escola de Belas Artes, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ [fotos: Monica Coster Ponte]