Pretencer: Street Art in the Process of Belonging and the Subjectivities of Black Youth
Art; Blackness; Territoriality; Street Art; Afro-referenced Education.
This dissertation seeks, through street art, to discuss how territorial belonging is fundamental in the construction of black peripheral subjectivities, taking as a case study the city of Nova Iguaçu, in the Baixada Fluminense. To this end, it presents conceptualizations of street art—still scarcely addressed within academia and often marginalized within the art world—while also highlighting its challenges and potentialities as a democratic form of art. Furthermore, it examines how the peripheral territory plays a foundational role in shaping black subjectivities, since both space and community hold the power to amplify characteristics, tastes, behaviors, and other dimensions of identity. The research engages with territoriality as a crucial aspect for Afro-diasporic bodies, drawing on African philosophies to reflect on community, belonging, occupation, and self-recognition within one’s own community. Guided by the theoretical paradigm of Contracoloniality, proposed by Antônio Bispo dos Santos (2007), this work reflects on how territory and belonging are essential in the construction of black identity, as well as on how aesthetic processes and Afro-referenced education converge to shape these subjectivities.