“O Suplício de Cabral” (The Torment of Cabral) is an allegory about the destruction process that is ongoing in Brazil since the arrival of the Portuguese. But one can also see the exhibition from a perspective that is less specific. In a vast scale of time, one understands that the destruction of the Earth has been in ongoing since humans decided to act in a predatory manner within the space they inhabit. We live under the aegis of the Anthropocene, the destruction is now, consciously mediated by the excesses provoked by people. Fantasizing from the arrival of the Portuguese ships onwards, Thiago Rocha Pitta uses the past to address the present, while also reconstructing it as a way of reflecting on the present and speculating about the future. According to the artist, “O Suplício de Cabral” “is a historical fiction, elaborated from an objective reality: our environmental collapse”.

The exhibition coincides with the bicentennial of the country’s independence, and also with the federal electoral year. In the face of these events, the watercolors in the show turn, as a whirlwind, to what Brazil has become since 1500: a territory built under systemic violence. This re-writing proposed by Rocha Pitta takes on the perspective of the Earth, represented by natives and animals, who become its advocates. The diptych “Cabo da Roca, 9 de março de 1500, faz-se ao Mar a Armada de Cabral” (Cape Roca, March 9, 1500; Cabral’s fleet sets sail) performs as a kind of preface to the show. The Cape Roca is where one finds the tombstone with the iconic quote by Camões: “Aqui... Onde a terra se acaba e o mar começa…” (Here…  where the earth ends and the sea begins…). The rock, which seems to levitate over the ocean, reveals something phantasmagorical. The chaotic atmosphere and the forewarning of death are also apparent in the sky, which is painted in strong blues and shades of grey, as if a storm was about to hit, announcing a not so pleasant journey. There is, without a doubt, a grim vibration and, little by little, the air becomes somber and taciturn.

The artist developed this series of watercolors within a filmic structure, as if it were the storyboard for a movie – a serialized production of frames that, together, establish a narrative order. Another characteristic that emphasizes the idea of a sequence is the fact that the plot is divided in chapters, like sub-series inside the story. We are presented with the “O Prenúncio” (The Forewarning), “A Travessia” (The Journey), “Um Mal entendido” (A Misunderstanding), “O Pesadelo da Terra” (The Nightmare of the Earth), “O Conselho Terrano” (The Council of the Earth), “O Baptismo” (The Baptism) and the epilogue, “O Suplício de Cabral” (The Torment of Cabral).

These works are deliberately and intrinsically beautiful, underlining nature’s splendor: the sky, the sea, and their sublime immensity. Brazil was gorgeous and abundant in natural resources before the Portuguese came, and their invasive arrival is announced in “O Monte Pascoal avista a armada de Cabral” (Pascoal Mount sees Cabral’s fleet). The Mount is who observes the fleet in the horizon. In this inverted perspective, the view is directed from the land to the sea, the invaders are the ones being observed. With the arrival on the beach, a friendly contact is established between natives, cabin boys and the exiled convicts. Then, they sleep in firm land, except for the officers. On that very night, the nightmares begin. Landscapes and times come and mesh together, revealing a repertoire of historical violence and extractivism in Brazil: a country founded on loss. It is “O Pesadelo da Terra” (The Nightmare of the Earth): the water dreams of drought; plants, of fire; the earth collapses; the sky falls; painted leopards become only fur. Forests dream of pastures, eucalyptus trees and cows. The ensemble isn’t only evidence of a series of continuous extractions against nature, but also of a kind of call to revolt against those who threaten its state.

The exhibition evinces our contemporary dramas: not only how much the Earth has been and continues to be explored, but also how the results of these actions eventually turn against us. The temperatures rise, the ice melts, the ozone layer is destroyed, sandstorms hit, desertification processes are in course: all the result of humanity’s exploitative actions. The nightmares dreamt in the plot of “O Suplício de Cabral” are events that we experience everyday. 

The fictional dimension, however, resides in the revolt of the natives, cabin boys, and nature itself, against the ships. The cabin boys soon learn to communicate with the natives, helping them with the uprising. The plot thickens when the invaders are bewitched on the eve of their departure. While they sleep, the ships are burnt. The few vessels that manage to escape the attack are sunk by whales and other maritime beings. 

This is the torment of Cabral: a way of rewriting History against the grain, now from the perspective of those who were attacked, robbed, killed, raped. The watercolors indicate that it’s from the arrival of the Portuguese onwards that another condition would guide Brazil’s History: we would constantly live under sings of destruction, fear and violence, having to continuously reinvent ourselves in the face of predatory policies. Regarding this last point, it is not by chance that that the sign of fury cuts across all the works. There’s something heroic in this narrative about nature taking down the enemy. The tale of an uprising of natives and of animals against the Portuguese fleet is, too, an allegory about the history of struggles that marks Brazil’s memory. This country’s history was built on  the historical oppression of an elite against subordinated communities – who also, in time, respond in kind to these injustices.