Linear Underdevelopment
2016.
Linear Underdevelopment
Watercolour and ink on paper. 61 x 61 cm.
2016.
Linear Underdevelopment (2021) makes reference to two maps of Brazil, the first of them was prepared as propaganda for the national policy of the March Westward (1938) during the Getúlio Vargas government (p.18), influenced by Cassiano Ricardo’s homonymous book, the program was focused on the development and modernization of the west of the country through the migration of settlers and the advancement of the agricultural frontier.
This map is presented as a poster with the sentence “The true meaning of Brazilianness is the march westward” and a set of arrows indicating the direction of colonization from the coast to the far west of Brazil. Thus, the map seems to allude to the narratives of colonial Brazil in which the coloniser (the “bandeirante”) left the coast to explore the interior of the continent, replacing the figure of the settler by the “national worker”, represented in the caravans and locomotives present on the map.
The second is the Import and Export map (1955) in the Atlas of Brazil, published by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) in 1959 in parallel with the construction of Brasília. The map shows a concentration of buying and selling of various products and raw materials on the country’s coastline, as opposed to a lack of information on the interior of the continent. This reiterated the discourse that proposed the construction of Brasilia as a solution to the supposed inertia and unproductivity of areas far from the coast.
![Import and Export (1955). Atlas of Brazil. IBGE. 1959.]()
![Import and Export (1955). Atlas of Brazil. IBGE. 1959.]()
“Linear Underdevelopment” selects and superimposes graphic elements of these two maps, generating a new cartography. The supposed neutrality of the technical design of these maps simulates a fanciful unity and harmony of the nation-state, concealing the processes of historical violence articulated for the production of a “sense of Brazilianness”. In this way, the work proposes to discuss the notions of developmentalism in Brazil, which despite being guided by a technicist modernization linked to an ideal of linear development, took the rudimentary colonial mythology of the bandeirante hero as a plot for its neocolonial enterprise.
Watercolour and ink on paper. 61 x 61 cm.
2016.
Linear Underdevelopment (2021) makes reference to two maps of Brazil, the first of them was prepared as propaganda for the national policy of the March Westward (1938) during the Getúlio Vargas government (p.18), influenced by Cassiano Ricardo’s homonymous book, the program was focused on the development and modernization of the west of the country through the migration of settlers and the advancement of the agricultural frontier.
This map is presented as a poster with the sentence “The true meaning of Brazilianness is the march westward” and a set of arrows indicating the direction of colonization from the coast to the far west of Brazil. Thus, the map seems to allude to the narratives of colonial Brazil in which the coloniser (the “bandeirante”) left the coast to explore the interior of the continent, replacing the figure of the settler by the “national worker”, represented in the caravans and locomotives present on the map.
The second is the Import and Export map (1955) in the Atlas of Brazil, published by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) in 1959 in parallel with the construction of Brasília. The map shows a concentration of buying and selling of various products and raw materials on the country’s coastline, as opposed to a lack of information on the interior of the continent. This reiterated the discourse that proposed the construction of Brasilia as a solution to the supposed inertia and unproductivity of areas far from the coast.
“Linear Underdevelopment” selects and superimposes graphic elements of these two maps, generating a new cartography. The supposed neutrality of the technical design of these maps simulates a fanciful unity and harmony of the nation-state, concealing the processes of historical violence articulated for the production of a “sense of Brazilianness”. In this way, the work proposes to discuss the notions of developmentalism in Brazil, which despite being guided by a technicist modernization linked to an ideal of linear development, took the rudimentary colonial mythology of the bandeirante hero as a plot for its neocolonial enterprise.