Well-known as an artist whose production always converses with art history, Gervane de Paula has enough irony and humor to establish and recall important agendas that have to do with the reality in which he produces his art. After visiting the Pinacoteca de São Paulo collection, Gervane made this work in which he caged a jaguar carved in wood inside a steel lattice, more or less as Nelson Leirner did in his work O Porco (The Pig, 1966). Leirner, however, unlike Gervane, used a stuffed animal (on display in room 3 – Territories of art, in the collection exhibition).

With The Pig, Leirner intended to question the state of art and art criticism, but Black Panther places the discussion in the geographical and political fields. Using the black jaguar both because of its association with Mato Grosso, his own home state, and because of the use of the animal as a symbol by the revolutionary organization for racial equality Black Panthers (founded in the United States in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton), Gervane de Paula not only discusses the materiality of his production, but also directs the conversation to the supposed precariousness of artistic productions from outside the Brazilian Southeast, more specifically from outside the Rio-São Paulo axis, which for decades has been the main character in the Brazilian art scene, leaving in the background artistic movements from other regions of the country.

Eugênio Nakayama