
Ademar Britto's flowers, Women of Color Don't Receive Flowers, 2021
On her fortieth birthday, Panmela is presented with these flowers by Ademar Britto who is very happy to see them painted with such affective importance. Ademar, who is an art collector, who despite being one of his best friends and supporter of his art for a long time, was unaware of this new production of his, and the experience took him by surprise and moved him:
“On my birthday I was presented with a vase and two bouquets of flowers, Ademar, Aldones and Gui respectively. Ademar is here at home every day. My accomplice in the arts, we grew up together. We spent some time fighting, but in the pandemic loneliness we reconnected with those we really love, and so we spent this difficult time together.”
Working from her personal experiences on the theme of “black woman's loneliness” developed by the black researcher from the Federal University of Bahia Ana Claudia Lemos Pacheco, Pamela Castro begins the production of a series of still lifes of flowers.
The theory assumes that black women are not understood as beings worthy of affection, and because they are far from the standards of beauty, they are passed over by white women, throwing them into a type of compulsory celibacy and the difficulty of maintaining emotional relationships, long-term officers. A problem of structural racism. Hence the phrase “black girls don't get flowers”.
From Gabriela Moura's phrase that went viral on the internet, the name of the anti-racist series “Black women don't get flowers” by Panmela Castro appears. In this set, the artist collects paintings-memories of flowers that she wins, steals, or that she finds in the houses she visits, in an incessant search for affection.
See the text by Gabriela Moura:
https://medium.com/gabriela-moura/girls-pretas-não-ganham-flores-bd6632f55da6
"The black woman is not seen as a being to be loved, so she does not receive flowers."
“Since I started the Residência Series, I started to realize that in the houses I went to, there were always fresh flowers: they were bought for me. I started to feel special and collect them as paintings.”
Panmela Castro
When visiting the homes of the people portrayed in his paintings, he notices that natural flowers are bought to decorate the environment, in a kind of self-referential delirium, he creates the perception of being presented with it, developing a sense of belonging, a recurring point in his work.
Between reality and fiction, sometimes she actually gets flowers with greeting cards, and still others she even paints artificial flowers in her quest for acceptance and love.
From time to time I analyze my thoughts and try to distinguish what is a social problem or a mere personal experience. There are many examples that show that racism is not an experience lived only by me, but also by several of my sisters. This is a historical question.
I think from Lélia Gonzalez and her concept of Amefricanity, and I can still say that I am a mixed Brazilian, descendant of black people brought from Africa, indigenous owners of Pindorama lands and a few white people who settled here. Therefore, like most women who share these experiences, I have my ancestry erased by colonialism, without knowing who my ancestors are.
In the ongoing quest to understand where I am in the world, I often found myself alone, not knowing where to lean on or who to turn to. My experience in the world, as a woman who does not fit the whiteness pattern, was marked by loneliness and fear of rejection, not only in structural contexts, but also in interpersonal relations.
Ana Claudia Lemos Pacheco already contextualized these feelings in her thesis on the loneliness of women of color, which has a complex and multilayered concept, but which I summarize here as the idea that women of color, because of racism and because they are far from the ideal of beauty (European white), are passed over by white women and are often separated between work and sex. Finally, with the difficulty of establishing long-term affective relationships, they end up leading their families alone, without a partner to share the support.
Rejection and difficulty in dealing with affectivity are symptoms that make up the history of most Brazilian women of color. With so much historical need, the process of painting flowers reflects my tireless search for affection. This research talks about what belonging means for me and for those who, like me, feel the urge to break with colonial pacts. This is how begins the anti-racist series “Women of Color Don't Get Flowers”, created by me and inspired by the text of the writer Gabriela Moura that went viral in 2019 on the internet.
During the pandemic, I isolated myself with some friends in their homes and was enchanted by the flower arrangements that adorned their houses. From that look, I revisited the memory and remembered when I spent my whole life believing that I was not worthy of receiving flowers, of experiencing this kind of affection.
I then began to fantasize that these flowers, which were already in their homes, were actually for me at the time of my visit. I started to collect paintings-memories of these flowers, creating canvas and naming them after the people who "gifted" me, each one unique, with their history and affection, in a fine line between fiction and reality. In a kind of self-referential delirium, I began to see special meaning in flowers that weren't for me, until I found myself painting even the plastic ones.
Over time, I started to receive many flowers, of the most different colors and sizes. I was graced by the gifts of these friends who, in a simple gesture of sending me a bouquet, managed to transform the fear I felt for rejection, creating in me a memory in which loneliness no longer fits, but the richness of affection. It's my friends who remind me that I'm not only worthy to receive flowers, but also to be loved.