Le Cri à La Roça

2023 | Exhibited at Text Me When You Get Home (2025), Ilha Disafo, São Paulo, Brazil

Victor Frond, one of the most important photographers of the 19th century, documented the Imperial period of Brazil to captivate the European gaze. One of his best-known photos, La Cuisine à la Roça (“Cooking at the Plantation”) (1859) was used in cash notes in the 20th century. Representation of a racially peaceful Brazil, this work shows Black slaves alienated from the world around them: without identity, subordinate and obedient.

Le Cri à la Roça (“Screaming at the Plantation”) poses the questions: whom does this image serve? Which voices are being excluded? Where is Black people’s agency represented in the history of Brazil? The linocut evokes the Black suffering and resistance that were (and still are) purposely erased from our historical archives. Through the black and white contrast and the mouths in the background, the engraving imposes discomfort in a violently peaceful image.

Le Cri à La Roça, 2023, 32 x 33 cm, linocut print on paper