CONCEPT | "Sangue Latino" is an original artwork, handmade by artist Lucas Belchior, which investigates territory not merely as a geographic space, but as an extension of the body itself. It is a visual manifesto about the favelas and peripheral territories of Rio de Janeiro as the sacred soil where resistance transforms into the creation of life.
Historically, the carioca favelas were built by Black and racialized arms and bodies. Faced with a colonial and hygienist city project designed to push us to the fringes, these bodies climbed the hills and took control of their own narratives. What the State framed as exclusion, ancestry transformed into roots. The favela ceases to be an urban "void" and becomes the beating heart of culture, dengo, and collective cariño. It is the place where we learn to walk together. To laugh together. To cry together. To create together. To dream together.
The artwork deals with the identity and the trauma of fragmentation left upon our ancestors. Through this piece, the artist chooses healing through belonging. Hand in hand with other peoples of this land, we carry the entirety of Latin America in our heads. The weight and the glory of a history of survival that runs through our veins. Our blood has roots. The favela is our territory-body-home.
The open third eye on the central figure's forehead operates the great conceptual shift of the artwork: it represents our capacity to see life through alternative means. While a sky-blue band fills our gaze—which yearns and dreams to reach the sky—our spiritual and ancestral vision remains intact and vigilant. It is the direct connection to those who came before us. This spirituality that guides and protects is rooted in the earth itself, materialized in the presence of the St. George's swords (espadas-de-são-jorge) that surround the hill, protecting the soul of the Brazilian territory. Between the palm trees that touch the sky and the Christ statue watching from the background, the colorful houses overlap like shields.
"Sangue Latino" is not just the representation of a community. It is a mirror of our dignity, our faith, and the revolutionary courage to exist and create culture from our own foundations and choices.
DETAILS | Original and limited edition artwork, handmade using India ink and oil pastel on 300g slightly textured couché paper. The textured surface brings elegance and materiality to the piece, enhancing the hand-drawn stroke, the colors, and the overlapping layers of figure, architecture, and landscape.
SIZE A5 — (14.8 cm × 21 cm)
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