Exhibition on Brazilian Cultural Heritage

by YULETTE COUTINHO
Posted on 2008-11-01
A journey through the Brazilian Soul, its cultural heritage is being organised for the first time in Goa by the Embassy of Brazil, New Delhi as a part of their First Brazilian Cultural Festival in India, in collaboration with Directorate of Archives and Archaeology, Govt of Goa and The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), New Delhi.
The Brazilian Heritage Exhibition was inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Goa, Shri Digambar Kamat at the Entertainment Society of Goa Exhibition Hall, Old G M C Heritage Precinct and is open for the public from October 30 to November 15, 2008. the Minister for Education, Archives and Archaeology, Mr Atanasio Monseratte; The Ambassador of Brazil H.E, Mr Marco Antonio Diniz Brandao; Mr Luis Antonio Fernandes Cardoso, Curator; Mr Narendra Kumar, Commissioner and Secretary Archives and Archaeology; Mr Arun Gupta, Advisor, INTACH and other eminent people from Brazil and Goa were present on the occasion.
The exhibition aims at giving an idea of the construction of Brazil as a nation and the constitution of its cultural heritage, especially concerning its urban and architectural productions, historically built during the last five centuries. Images and texts are hung from a series of panels and an exhibition of short documentary films produced and edited by IPHAN – Instituto do Patrimonio Historico e Artistico Nacional (Institute of the Artistic and Historical National Heritage) will be shown, in order to allow visitors to have a closer contact with some of the main cultural expressions recorded by the Institute as immaterial Brazilian patrimony, like the Samba de Roda from Bahia and the Samaba Carioca (from Rio), amongst others.
The exhibiting panels display the continental size of Brazil, the contribution of different people and ethnic groups that formed its society, the wealth and variety of its ecosystems, which originated a diverse, and multiple cultural universes. The confluence of so many and so varied formative matrices could have resulted in a multiethnic society, torn by the opposition of different and immiscible components. However, despite the sign of its multiple ancestral surviving in the somatic feature and in the Brazilian Spirit, they do not differentiate in antagonistic racial, cultural or regional minorities, tied to a peculiar and contentious ethnic loyalty of autonomy before the nation. More than simple ethnic group, Brazil is an ethnic nation; a people-nation settled in a proper territory and fitted into the same state for living its destiny.
This is undoubtedly a unique way of bringing the Brazilian Culture closer to Goans and thus bridging the gap, everyone must participate and enjoy the festival and be a part of the vivacious sequence of this cultural festival of Brazil.