‘Syncretism’ as History: Afro-Brazilian Shrines in British Ethnographic Museums

• In Event: The Fluid Lives of Objects: Diasporas of Black Sacred Material Culture

Description for Program

The Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) at the University of Oxford stores an assemblage of objects used in Afro-Brazilian ceremonies, including a feather headdress, a mended clay figurine of a Preto Velho (an entity in the guise of an elderly Black man), offerings of pipes and twisted tobacco, three figurines of Catholic saints, and textiles marked by melted wax. They have been labelled a ‘voodoo shrine’, of unknown makers and date of production.

Provenance and archival records point to acquisition by Malcolm Bruce Corrie, who left a disjunct paper trail: ex-PRM employee, Oxford graduate with the thesis ‘Umbanda: a religious syncretism in a favela community in Rio de Janeiro’, and recipient of grants to conduct ‘ethnographic’ research in Brazil, where he taught Anthropology in the 1960s.

I trace possibilities for the histories of these shrine objects to chart the interconnectedness between Brazilian colonial-era (1500-1822) demonisation of African religion, independent Brazil’s ‘civilising project’ and criminalisation of Afro-Brazilian religiosity (enforced until the 1960s), and British ethnographic and museological interests in Black spiritualities.

These histories demonstrate changing aesthetic and ethical discourses on Black sacred material culture, from the creation of syncretic altars in Brazil to the museological afterlife of this assemblage in the UK.

Author

• Luisa Karman, SOAS University of London