INTERVIEW_EUSTÁQUIO NEVES

Eustáquio Neves’ work is permeated with physical and chemical manipulations of photographs, and his career is punctuated by high-impact images and wide-ranging significations: personal, autobiographical, as well as regarding the conditions of Afro-descendants in Brazil. A new installation by Neves is being exhibited in Salvador, inaugurating in a new phase in his career: he is using projections, and here he talks about video work.

By Helio Hara

Your work has always contained research and experimentation with interferences (both physical and chemical). Does the new installation that you will present at the exhibition, including projections, represent a new phase, a new challenge?
Those who follow my work closely will notice that I still experiment a lot, and that I’m using less interference (physical and chemical). Video is something I have wanted to do for a long time. Indeed, the use of video in the aforementioned exhibition inaugurates a new phase in my career, and it also represents a challenge. There are few curatorships that offer the conditions needed for the artist to produce, and this is one of those rare moments.

English photography critic Mark Sealy claims that your work is clearly and directly related to your being a Black man. Is that important to you, or would you rather be seen and thought of simply as an artist?
It is a good thing to be seen and thought of simply as an artist, but one cannot forget his blackness. For example, physical interferences in the images are needed so that I can express my view regarding image in the Western Hemisphere.

I have read somewhere that your stepfather was from Mozambique. Is that the reason why you have some kind of relationship with the past and with the concept of Diaspora?
This whole thing about a stepfather from Mozambique happened because of a typo. I mentioned in an interview once that my stepfather had joined a brigade in Mozambique, in a secular-religious demonstration of resistance. Actually, my relationship with the past stems from daily experiences, it has to do with inequality, with my mother’s struggle to raise me and my four brothers with dignity. She is a strong and essential presence in my formation.

Where is your work headed? Would you like to experiment with new media, such as video?
Yes, I would. I guess I have always made photography with cinema in mind, and video is a more accessible resource.

Your art incorporates personal elements, such as pictures of your mother; is that a way of thinking about your own history? Is this confrontation with the past painful, or is it pleasurable?
I feel pleasure in making art. It could be painful to do it, but it’s my means of expression, my instrument, a way of exposing things I dislike, and reflecting. My work is almost entirely autobiographical. Nevertheless, in order to discuss the profound scars left by slavery in the today’s world, I used a picture of my mother when she was young, as well as pictures of myself and my family.