Dona Romana

This research and extension work follows the House of Dona Romana, in Natividade, Tocantins, as a singular place of memory, popular creation, cosmology, and preparation for the future. Mãe Romana, a quilombola woman with no formal schooling, has been building, since 1973, a “firmament” based on dreams, visions, and instructions received from other worlds. There she stores water, seeds, books, objects, sculptures, paintings, and pieces that, according to her, will be useful after the “great day,” when life will have to be reinvented.

Her house cannot be understood at first sight. One must listen to its internal logic, observe its objects, and accept the force of a form of thought organized outside conventional models of rationality. What some call madness, clairvoyance, or invention appears, in this research, as a radical form of cosmological imagination, material care, and safeguarding of life. The work is developed in collaboration with Marcelo Santos Rodrigues, within the CNPq Research Group History, Memory, and Latin American Narratives, with dialogues opened through the Afro-Brazilian Studies Center at UFT.