Rite & Expression

1988 9mMovie

Originally an eight-monitor installation, Rite and Expression is an impressionistic evocation of the cultural history of Our Lady of the Rosario Church, a Baroque edifice in the central Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Built during the seventeenth century in the historic gold-mining town of Ouro Preto (Black Gold), the Rosario Church was intended as a cultural and social locus for African slaves. Santos draws on the natural (earth, wood, stone, gold, inks and paints), the human, the social and cultural (the Rosario Feast, African garments and ritual objects) in his electronic reconstruction of the sole Minas Gerais church imprinted with Italian influence. The church's round shapes and forms evoke both Baroque motifs and African cultural rituals.