Dos quintais às prateleiras: as imagens quilombolas e a produção da louça em Itamatatiua - Alcântara - Maranhão

Abstract

This research approaches the several meanings attributed to the production of earthenware women who live in Itamatatiua, a quilombo remnant community located in Alcântara, Maranhão. Their secular production of earthenware is analyzed in an ethnography through the category of contact zone as a privileged scope for the observation of speeches through which earthenware makers from Itamatatiua become not only Quilombo people, but also women, black, and artisans. Inhabiting a territory considered as lands of Santa Tereza, women from Itamatatiua build their narratives with respect to their perceptions of outer actors to the village, such as the tourists, researchers, design consultants who seek in their territorialities a way to access the past. The shared and perceived result is what I call Quilomboish images. These images, made of narratives, ways of acting and thinking and here also assumed as graphic images (photographs, graphic pieces and audiovisual material) reveal historical layers and hegemonic discourses that are resignified in constant interactions with tourists and researchers, including myself as a researcher and designer. The narratives of the women on the know-how of the earthenware on their imaginary about the tourists, on what the consultants seek in the Quilombo are some among other components of the Quilomboish images.