How can we talk artistically about death in the context of a collective mourning such as the pandemic? Núcleo Ajeum, from the southern outskirts of São Paulo, goes from the black body, its worldview and the multidimensional universe of the Candomblé yards and its afro-senses to show the current stage of research and creation of the show IKU, an orixá of the pantheon of Yoruba and a word that means death.

The African and Afro-Brazilian cultures underlie the work, which uses a reading of the concept of necropolitics, as the Cameroonian thinker Achille Mbembe called the power of the State to decide who can live or die in situations of absolute inequality in income distribution, such as the Brazilian one.

Therefore, “Ikupolítica” – as the group poetically delineates itself from the writings of Wanderson Flor do Nascimento – proposes that one can feel the absences, question the reasons and their structures, while keeping the possibility of celebrating this ancestor who is gone, his actions, his existence, his contributions to the social environment and the family. A community is built by hundreds of agreements with each other. Agreements that work in the maintenance of life, existential drive, the pleasures and sharing that can generate meaning. Not by chance, ajeum, the word that gives name to the group, means to eat together in Yoruba.

FULL TECHNICAL DATA SHEET
Direction, realization and choreography: Djalma Moura
Performer-creators: Aysha Nascimento, Djalma Moura, Erico Santos, Marina Souza, Sabrina Dias and Victor Almeida
Resident artists/interns: Eri Sá and Juliana Nascimento
Research Orientation: Bruno Garcia Onifadé
Musical direction: Dani Nega
Sound Collaboration: Pedro Bienemann
Costumes: Eder Lopes e Núcleo Ajeum
Masks: Daniel Normal, Erico Santos and Murilo de Paula
Lighting design and operation: Juliana Jesus
Body pratices: Bruno de Jesus, Djalma Moura, Lenny de Sousa, Letícia Tadros and Verônica Santos
Graphic Arts: Bruno Marciteli
General Production: Dafne Nascimento
In Memorie and celebration: Carol Zanola, Dona Carmelita Maria Dias, Dona Jandira, Dona Margarida, José do Nascimento, Maria Paulina Ferro, Núbia Sá Lima and Rosa Maria de Jesus

WEBSITE/ SOCIAL MEDIA
nucleoajeum.com
instagram.com/nucleoajeum
facebook.com/nucleoajeum
www.youtube.com/channel/UCjGRkr-TGha7d9JmeEd9H3A