On the art of occupying the void:
the The New Brazilian Flag series

by Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (USP/Princeton)

It all began in early 2018, when Raul Mourão was leaving an art fair held at Piers 92 and 94 on the banks of the Hudson River in New York. Raul Mourão noticed a US flag attached to a mast but without the stars that make up the famous American symbol. In fact, because of the wind, the flag had wrapped itself around the mast and, seen in this way, everything seemed to suggest that the stars had simply disappeared. The artist then made a simple visual recording, on video, showing the American flag without the stars, covering and revealing a thin moon that appeared in the background of the image. Looking at the flag by exclusion – without the stars – offered an easy but necessary metaphor for thinking about what was happening in the United States of Donald Trump, but also for reflecting on what was happening and is happening here in Brazil.

Either way, the idea stuck. Back in Brazil, walking through [Rio’s Bohemian district of] Lapa, Mourão thought it would be good idea to perform a similar intervention on the Brazilian flag. Given the times, when Jair Bolsonaro (permanently unaffiliated with any political party) has made systematic, if not farcical, use of the nation’s green and yellow, misappropriating beloved symbols, including the flag and its green and yellow colors, why not create a “Brazilian version” of the vision the artist had in Manhattan? The artist bought one of those flags sold in every neighborhood shop and made in incision in the area where the motto “Order and Progress” is found together with the stars that represent Brazil’s different states. Having cut out this area, the Brazilian flag now appeared not only without the stars that compose it, but erased and violated: the emptiness signifying the absence of the states (and the State): of the federation and the republic itself.

The flag, duly presented in all its incompleteness, with this glaring hole, was then placed on the wall of the artist’s studio. At the same time, it became a work in progress. Mourão improvised a wooden mast, which was then erected, along with the flag, on the façade of the building where his studio operates. All this took place on the eve of carnival.

As the streets of Lapa were already in carnival mood, the artist went out bearing the flag like a carnival costume, so that he and it became an artistic performance in themselves. This was also a political and cultural intervention, since it involved parading around wrapped in a national object, but which was (now) also an art object, in the midst of pre-carnival Friday.

It is worth recalling that 2018 was the time of the brief presidency of Michel Temer, who, by then, had already staged a coup d’état, actively participating in the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, which occurred on August 31, 2016. There was a general sense of deep suspicion regarding the national political mood and of great fear for the health of Brazilian democracy. The farcical process, which charged the then president with an “abuse of office”, along with the depressing spectacle presented by the congressmen who voted in favor of the impeachment, foreshadowed what would happen soon afterwards: the installation of a government formed of usurping politicians, misogynists, racists and supporters of the military dictatorship. The House session presented a degrading spectacle of “familism”, with deputies voting for their mothers, and wives, sons and daughters, cities and religions, without ever addressing the issue at stake.

Following the impeachment of the president, which process began in December 2015, Brazil emerged a smaller, far less republican country. Raul Mourão decided there and then to “drape himself in the flag”.

And it was in the midst of this fervor of collective disappointment that The New Brazilian Flag project took shape. During that strange carnival of 2018, Raul Mourão decided to fly a Brazilian flag denuded of its circular center in the Arches of Lapa, with the samba pumping away in the background. Tourists, street vendors and revelers filed by, but the flag hoist by the artist remained strangely untouched, as if it had been officially raised to kick-start the festivities.

In Mourão’s conception, this was an artistic intervention that bordered on the illegal or, at the very least, it was a work unauthorized by the so-called “competent authorities”. This is because the flag was screwed onto one of the architectural landmarks of the neighborhood, where four glaring holes pierced the walls, representing a kind of violation of the public space.

This defiance was not accidental, however: it was deliberate. It was part of Mourão’s attempt to understand how far the “tolerance of Rio’s police” would extend in the face of what is generally defined as “vandalism”; in their clearly biased, ideologically-inclined readings of certain works of art that use public spaces as the loci of artistic production. The word “vandal” originally refers to the people who invaded the “Roman empire”, and destroyed it, and who today are invoked to describe the actions of people who disrespect the law, rules and public spaces.

This is a thorny issue which has been the subject of broad debate and disagreement not only in Brazil but internationally. Who does the public space belong to? Who or what should we celebrate and how? Monuments are designed to be contested and this has been the fate of many sculptures scattered throughout Brazil whose very presence reaffirms the same colonial, European, male story. They also reinforce a certain “nationalism”; an attitude that differs from “patriotism” due to the uncritical stance it adopts.

Now, Mourão imagined that this would “provoke a reaction”. He assumed the city authorities would react and that their response would provide material for a video-photographic work. But he was wrong; no authority was bothered by the invasive object. The installation survived all of Friday and part of the Saturday of carnival. After that, it disappeared. Nevertheless, its metal base ended up in the building of the artist’s studio and thus became a memory and record of the new work.

The work also turned into a community project. Raul Mourão then had the idea of inventing different formats (small, medium and large), creating various media and designs, with the Brazilian flag emerging not only cut up but multiplied, having its original elements moved about and reshuffled.

Mixed up, subverted and imbued with new perspectives, through the removal of different parts of the national banner, the Brazilian flag was never more alive and removed from the political uses to which the current government has put it.

The work also helped support the activities of Rato BranKo, which was founded in 2011 in the city of Rio de Janeiro at the time of the Cabelo Apresenta Mc Fininho e Dj Barbante no Baile Funk (Gentil) Carioca exhibition, which featured a presentation of songs, paintings, installations, objects and videos by the artist Cabelo, under the curatorship and production of Mourão.

Both artists identify the starting point for the initiative as January 2016, when Mourão and Cabelo became neighbors in the Lapa 71 studio building, located on Rua Joaquim Silva, in Rio de Janeiro. From that moment, they established a working partnership, with the atelier Rato BranKo being inaugurated on March 3. The project came to be defined as an experimental laboratory dedicated to making films, music and art objects corresponding to the individual workshops of the artists.

The intention, in turn, was to dialogue with a broader, non-specialist audience, and to attract people from the streets and passers-by. Documentary-Art, News-Art and Journalism-Art are some of the concepts that have been used in the duo’s works, both jointly and separately.

Then Mourão decided to prepare a new intervention, which consisted of making a flag of smaller dimensions, without the oval center, and with a circulation of 666 copies, which would cost 666 reais each, with all proceeds being donated to the cultural activities of Rato BranKo.

Six is the number of Man, because God created him on the sixth day (Genesis 2:26-31). The number 666, on the other hand, has received different and sometimes contradictory, if not opposite, meanings. On the one hand, it represents a human trinity in imitation of the divine trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So, three times six refers to a human structure that presents itself as the Holy Trinity. 666, however, is also the number or the mark of the beast, according to Christian tradition.

The best-known explanation for this can be found in the last book of the Bible: Revelation, chapter 13, verse 18, which states, “Here is wisdom. Let he who has understanding calculate the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.” In antiquity, the number 666 was associated with Nero, the emperor of Rome who most persecuted Christians. So, adherents of this religion came to refer to the emperor as the “beast”. However, to avoid being repressed for challenging Nero, they decided to use this secret code when referring to the tyrant. Which is to say, the faithful associated the Hebrew letters that formed the emperor’s name with numbers. Moreover, the verse from Revelation was intended to refer not only to Nero, but to all despots.

Finally, theologians say that the 6 cited in the Bible, is an imperfect number which may even be antagonistic to good. Thus, the fact that it was repeated three times signified the beast in all its plenitude.

Theological clashes aside, it is clear, for Mourão, that the number 666 was indeed associated with the Brazilian beast, now dressed as the president. The work arrived loaded with history and it acquired a new history. It appeared in other exhibitions, formed part of the scenery of the musician Adriana Calcanhotto’s show, was a book cover and newspaper illustration, and appeared highlighted on the wall of Caetano Veloso’s house when the singer gave a remote show in 2020.

It is, thus, a work that emerged before Bolsonaro, the pandemic and social isolation. But it acquired new meanings and multiplied in the context of the economic, political, social, moral and health crises in which Brazilian society finds itself. Moreover, thanks to the speed of digital media, the cut-up flag began to circulate on social networks, generating huge empathy and public support for the work. Indeed, The New Brazilian Flag continues to circulate, like a flag in the wind.

On flags and symbols: the full and the empty

Flags are not innocent objects. They form part of a symbolic arsenal specifically created to produce “imagined communities”, in the apt and familiar expression of the sociologist Benedict Anderson. Which is to say, a nation is always a dismembered and soulless territory that only acquires consistency from the feeling and affect that we construct, and which is embedded in, and expressed by, the symbols of the country: flags, anthems, mottos and coats of arms. This is how a people recognize themselves as unique and learn the importance of belonging to a nation. The operation is itself quite artificial, but the result seeks to normalize and even naturalize the effect of history, and manipulate the sense of a homeland.

And in Brazil it is no different. A young nation, for a long time dominated by the Portuguese metropolis, during colonial times it wasn’t easy to find anyone who defined himself or herself as Brazilian. Perhaps that’s why, from the beginning of this story, when Brazil was still ‘the Brazils’, or Portuguese America, until the time of the United Kingdom [of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves], in 1815, the country had a succession of national flags

While Brazil remained a Lusitanian colony, the flag was the same for all the territories belonging to the rich and vast Portuguese Empire. It was only when Brazil became the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves that an official flag was first established, specifying that the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Brazil should be composed of a golden armillary sphere set against a blue background.

However, it was only after Independence in 1822 that the first official Brazilian flag was created. Between September and December of that year, the personal standard of the former Royal Prince of the United Kingdom — composed of a yellow lozenge on a green background, with the prince’s coat of arms in the middle, created by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Debret following an explicit request from Dom Pedro – came to represent the new Empire. But it was with the coronation of Dom Pedro I as Emperor of the newly independent Brazil that the royal crown which adorned the coat of arms was replaced by the imperial crown. The decree that instituted the official flag dates from September 18, 1822, proving how “urgent” the creation of this symbol for the now independent country was.

It is worth noting that, despite its political autonomy, the colors still recalled the colonial and monarchical past of the new country. After all, green was the color of House of Braganza and the personal standard of Pedro II of Portugal. Yellow symbolized the color of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, the branch from which the Empress Maria Leopoldina descended. As can be seen, the national flag came into being concealing its true origin. Indeed, the idea that the green of the flag refers to “our forests” and the yellow to “our gold” has no basis in reality and what the flag was honoring, even in 1822.

The artist Debret, accustomed to working with the Napoleonic French state, sought inspiration in the First French Empire to conceive the flag’s central lozenge. This was also a disguised reference to Freemasonry, an organization to which Pedro I belonged in a theoretically covert manner.

The statesman, Ruy Barbosa, tried to push the idea of a design based on the flag of the United States – a country which, in this context, was a trend-setter when it came to republicanism in the Americas. The Brazilian politician proposed that the flag present thirteen alternating green and yellow horizontal stripes, with 21 stars set against a black background in the flag’s upper corner. These would represent the Brazilian states.

This model of flag only lasted for four days, however, and was actually flown on the ship, Alagoas, that carried the former Brazilian imperial family into exile. It was then discarded and abandoned to the past.

Marechal Deodoro, a die-hard monarchist, suggested that the new Republican flag retain the imperial shape and colors, and that only the crown be eliminated, which previously appeared in the center of the flag in homage to the emperors of Brazil. The stars corresponding to the states would, however, be maintained. The decree was issued on November 19, 1889, once again showing the haste and importance of creating symbols that represented the new political regime thereafter. The slogan “Order and Progress” was also added to the white banner and it was ordered that the letters be printed in green. This motto was created by the Brazilian army, then greatly influenced by the positivism and evolutionism expressed in the phrase. The inscription was an abbreviated form of the political slogan of the French philosopher Auguste Comte, which read: “Love as principle, order as the basis, progress as the goal.”

And so it came about that the Brazilian flag acquired an agreed form, only altering its number of stars in accordance with the geographical and political changes of the states that make up the federation.

It was also inspired by this flag that Raul Mourão created his series which “subversively subverts” what appears to be too established. The flag becomes art by exploring and disarticulating its constitutive elements and silencing the legend: “Order and Progress”.

Unlike the optimistic, evolutionist phrase rooted in a single type of progress that acts like an arrow of time – always facing forward – Raul Mourão’s work highlights our incompleteness and absences. It turns and grows as a metaphor for emptiness. The institutional void; the emptiness of uncertainty, lack of structure, day-to-day violence, insecurity and fear.

This is because it wasn’t only the “health of democracy” that was at stake in Brazil. No one could have known it, but Brazil’s “physical health” would enter a state of emergency in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Not that the news of Covid-19 had stopped circulating in Brazil at the end of 2019. But at that time, most Brazilians preferred to forget about it and move on. It was too much bad news at the same time.

The New Brazilian Flag series thus covered an existential void. It invites and exhorts us to abandon our passivity in the context of the deeply dystopic and retrograde times in which we live. It is time to transform this empty glass into a full one. It is time to go out dressed as a flag and to reclaim the misappropriated symbols. It is time to intervene in the flag to somehow renew it.

It is time to create completeness over the void.