From the crowds to the galleries: how Salvador shaped Pedro Marighella

The multidisciplinary artist is from Salvador and has been involved with art since he was 15. Music, design, and visual arts occupy a significant place in his life and especially in his work. Crowds are a point of interest and walk through all these mediums that Pedro intends to work with. Critique also plays its role: Marighella has always seen art as a way to promote some form of political and social critique.

We spoke with the artist about his beginnings in the arts, his DJ career, and his love for various areas of art. Check it out below:

• You are from Salvador and graduated from UFBA. Where did this desire to work with art come from? Is it something that has always been there?

Yes. I graduated in Plastic Arts from the Federal University of Bahia 🙂… But the interest in art comes from long before. I had the privilege of living in a family that interacted with artists, interestingly, without attending spaces of the art system (galleries, museums, etc.).

Through studios and works of my parents' friends (I highlight my interactions with Ângelo Roberto, an artist I admire who participated in the Second Bienal of Bahia). Another thing: My father was a state deputy when I was a child. My mother was a state public servant. They both worked at the Administrative Center of Bahia (CAB, a kind of Bahian Brasília designed by urban planners like Lelé). I was very interested in the public works present in the State Legislative Assembly, such as Carybé's panels on the façade of the building, Carlos Bastos' large panel in the plenary room... The panels of Juarez Paraíso at CAB... There are many interests. Not only in form but also in experiencing the political effects of it all, a certain civic component of the artwork formed me... There’s the influence of militant arts, Niemeyer’s tomb made for my grandfather, the carnival decorations also by Juarez and the blocks... so many incredible experiences formed me. I don't know if I can say everything here (laughs). But I believe that my early ability for drawing, fueled by all these stimuli, formed this desire.

• How do you approach the creative process in developing your works? Is there a specific routine or ritual you follow?

For a long time, my work has been in dialogue with the images that tourism and entertainment corporations promote in amalgamation with the State, along with the rhetoric of culture and identity: often inventing traditions detached from the city's daily life, while at other times allowing the insubordinate character of the bodies of a city in celebration to seep through. Thus, a good part of my creative process involves sifting through various collections and reorganizing the narrative that is expected of them… Then comes what Zé de Rocha (an artist and friend) calls acting on the word-image bond, associating the images that arise from this with the titles I choose, like: the carnival crowd, I call it Mata; urban dancers, I call it Temple; and so on…

I have had studio space for many years. It is where I keep a computer to organize a collection, select, and edit images (I currently use a free software called Krita and a very old Wacom tablet). This equipment is connected to a projector that helps me transpose these digital compositions to canvas and paper. My routine is quite 5x2 (Monday to Friday 🤓), usually I handle emails, invitations, project writing, early in the morning, then I move onto digital sketches, canvases, the more conventional part… But, anyway, the part I enjoy the most is the articulations. For example, I’m very excited about my partnership with Joy Nigga, a multi-artist, a friend better known as a pagodão dancer with whom I’ve been brainstorming ideas for years, though with few tangible results so far (laughs)... there comes a time when it’s impossible to invent a routine for these articulations. The process, no matter how much we outline it, remains subjected to possibilities of financing, mood, scheduling, various institutional restrictions, human limits, or the very advantages of what is unpredictable; anyway… This is my routine (laughs)

• You transit through various mediums to express yourself, such as illustration, painting, music, design, etc. - how do you choose which path to follow? Do you prefer any particular one?

I have these parallel careers (laughs). Between the ages of 15 and 30, my livelihood came from illustration and design work. I have works that I am very proud of, such as album covers for Lazzo Matumbi, Mateus Aleluia, ÀTTØØXXÁ…. As a career, I now see all of this more integrated into my visual arts side. Thus, I have only these two sides left, thankfully: visual arts and music…

On the music side, I have my project of original compositions, and occasionally I produce under the pseudonym Som Peba… I’m a vinyl collector, DJ (not quite a career in itself, right?)…. I was one of the first artists to adopt as a signature the relationship of Bahia’s popular music with electronic genres, but, decisively, I live from the relationship with the circuit of visual arts.

Regarding the themes that occupy me, related to the critical potential of fun that interests me, I often reference the cultural industry and the recording industry… Currently, I am very interested in the designs of vinyl album covers, thinking of them as a reasonably possible visual arts circuit at the end of the 20th century, while we discuss the ingratitude we have toward public collections in Brazil and the volatility of digital collections… Besides that, we cannot deny the unique role that Bahia occupies from the 1980s onwards, with the rise of axé music, fostering, through the recording industry, a counterpoint to the predominance of the Rio-São Paulo axis. As a soteropolitan, I feel empowered by this history that precedes me, and often we deal with it as if it were bad taste… Perhaps, in this context, music for me is a comma of insubordination and power.

Perhaps my meeting point between these paths of visual arts and music is in what life presents to me as power and relevance… Let’s see…

• How do you see the role of critique in your work?

I don’t see the participation of a “critique.” Are you talking about “critique,” “art critique”? (laughs) Does it exist? (laughs). I don’t even know if there are people interested in me in what we could call critical work, to answer… I don’t see an institutional field sufficiently committed to promoting any consistent, broad dialogue… There are many challenges to be undertaken in the Brazilian context. From what I know of the Brazilian art landscape, I see critical work as something almost exclusive to curatorial production. However, I see the dedicated work of some resistant people who care about dialoguing with the relevance of life from art. I follow with great affection the effort and work of João Victor Guimarães (who has a volume of productions in critical essays) and Uriel Bezerra: both friends, curators, and interlocutors, with whom I share impressions, discoveries, and outbursts. Thank you, friends!

• Since very early on you were already achieving great things for your career - for the coming years, what are your aspirations? Is there a project or vision that you would like to explore?

To be honest, I don’t know (laughs). Painting is still my place of livelihood, but I am increasingly interested in projects related to memory, documentation, collection…. Ah! I don’t know! I want everything, guys!

• In the 2000s, you started to act as a DJ. Where did this love for music come from? And what was your goal with it?

So, regarding the question about the year 2000, when I started DJing, I found it a very interesting question because I think that indeed I was a child more involved with drawing, with graphic arts. I had an aptitude that was more explicitly presented for graphic arts. But I did go through a phase; my mother enrolled me in a free course for children at UFBA, at the School of Music of UFBA, but it was very brief, just a year, a bit of basic composition, sight-reading, playing the recorder. But I think what is essential to note is that, well, I was born in 79, and, as was common at the time, my musical education was heavily shaped by MPB, by those names that are widely known - a lot of Gilberto Gil, my home had some Luiz Gonzaga records.

I was also very educated by the music from the radio, by what played on the radio, both Brazilian and international music, which reached me. I was very interested in that universe of radio music, played in the car, enjoyed in free time, at people's homes. We must also remember that this was a time, at least here in Bahia, when there was still a strong presence of music in the streets, at Largo parties, samba de roda, trips to the countryside, carnival, fanfare, there was already music from electric trios. There was another type of construction of carnival circuits, a different ergonomics. But music was always there in my life. Because my father was an active political figure on the left, we also have to consider that the place of a relationship with the arts was, in a way, to promote some kind of political critique, social, it was a left-wing stance, predominantly.

So, I have very vivid memories that impacted me greatly, such as visiting the headquarters of Olodum in Pelourinho, being at the rehearsals of the blocks, because it was a place where my father knew the people who promoted that network of collective production that are the blocks, especially the afro blocks.

So that imprinted on me the importance of music not only as a form but also as a political event, right? With its power to generate political consciousness. I can say that I was very affected by the radio and phonographic success of Samba Reggae, of axé music, but in every way, I was also always interested in strange music, and this became more explicit during my adolescence.

As I got a bit older, MTV arrived here in Salvador and it had an impact on my adolescence, on a certain multidisciplinary perception of music in relation to image. Towards the late nineties, there was a dissemination of electronic music from the North-West. But in every way, this made me interested in a type of more underground music. Information was coming in Salvador through these transitions - people travel, come back with records, compilations. At the time, a CD with various software like Rebuff and other editing programs circulated here in Salvador. And people were installing these programs and learning a lot, and I think that CD influenced an electronic music scene in Salvador.

But I didn’t see my friends, the people who attended parties, interested in similar phenomena happening in Salvador. So, I found it very strange that we had phenomena like Olodum and Ilê, especially, and that people didn’t like that, at the same time they liked things that were on the shelves of the phonographic industry.

And this began to raise questions for me, taking my background into consideration - my previous experience, my training - a suspicion that indeed there are elements of social distinction presented through people's relationships with certain phenomena of the phonographic industry. Perhaps also an element of racial rejection, because at that time, those afro blocks, especially, were seen as phenomena from Salvador's black communities. So I became very suspicious of that presence, that behavior that existed in Salvador's alternative culture. And I'm talking about a time when vinyl culture was in decline. And at the same time, there was this electronic music scene. I was questioning why people didn’t like certain types of soteropolitan music, Bahian music, Brazilian music, and simultaneously, the decline of vinyl culture was occurring, with many people discarding their collections, updating to CDs. And then I found myself as a huge receptor of old records that no longer had a function. It was like this task of a collector - and I think it was one of the most wonderful things I have ever done in my life, because through these questions, I began to pay attention to a collection I started building of Bahia music, of things I found interesting, somewhat disruptive, with that axé music culture, which is more mainstream. I allowed myself to make an attempt a little more B-side of that culture and even to celebrate great productions of what was strong, mainstream too, without a problem. But the point I want to get to is this: I found myself in somewhat of a cultural agent position that needed to share a critical word, to reorganize those collections, that critical thinking regarding the social distinctions promoted through this automatic access, this automatic ease to the recommendations of the international phonographic industry.

And as most of my alternative friends showed up with their turntables with imported needles and all, playing hits or more obscure things from the North-West's electronic music. And suddenly I found myself infiltrated as that somewhat problematic figure that slipped into DJ sets, at friends’ parties, and started playing my collection of vinyl records, of Axé Music, of Samba Reggae, of black music from Salvador, or not so much black, but that local music that was normally seen as in poor taste.

And many times I was expelled from the parties, and people shook their heads negatively, indicating they were hating it, giving thumbs down to show they were not enjoying it. So I think that was the start, and indeed, I think I’m somewhat at the forefront in this sense. I don’t have a memory of anyone having done this operation before me. I’m talking about a period between 1999 and 2000, something like that. I won’t know for sure.

During this same period, a friend arrives with a magazine. He comes from a course in England to learn English. And he arrives with a Spanish magazine that said there was a DJ named 'DJ de Mierda' - sort of a 'shitty DJ', right?

Anyway, I have never been such a good DJ and I didn't intend to be one, to be honest. I think I liked more to infiltrate a bit with that disruptive figure, and what I can tell you is that I adopted the pseudonym São Peba as a tribute to that 'DJ de Mierda', and thinking that I could produce this self-irony as a foretaste of my message.

This idea of DJ São Peba evolved a bit as I re-appropriated it, as my musical taste unfolded into my own ideas. So, I began composing songs in my free time. And I became known in Salvador and later outside. Friends began to listen to and like the compositions I was making in electronic music. And I did not see myself as a person from the music world. I saw myself as someone doing it somewhat clumsily even, in a way, just to provoke, right?

In this, I think, in a way, my sites began to educate a series of people here in Salvador. The music began to spread, and I think the taste, in a certain way, began to change. So I think the profile of people, of what they understand as correct music, changed a lot. I think it was very collaborative for a local scene and perhaps outside Salvador too. And I won’t lie, when I see someone playing Axé Music at a DJ set, at an alternative party, I always think they’re quoting me, making excuses, and it seems like I’m getting a lot of credit.

And I see this as something that is intrinsically related to my way of viewing art, as if the form were more of a device to trigger some sort of social command, some instruction, some reflection on how we organize as a community, anyway.

• Crowds are a point of interest and are very well represented in your works. Where does your inspiration to portray them come from?

About the crowds as a point of interest in my works, I think that in that previous question, about my experiments as a DJ, I make an introduction that helps answer a bit.

I was not indifferent - it’s a bit the consolidation of some cultural and institutional transformations in the city. We must remember that Salvador had a period of great influence from a political group we call Carlismo. Which has this leadership, Antonio Carlos Magalhães, who is a figure that emerged post-military dictatorship, consolidating a media oligarchy, mainly, different from those ancient rural oligarchies we see in the Northeast, many call Coronelismo. We are talking about a type of consolidation of a powerful group that establishes itself through the media.

Antonio Carlos Magalhães was Minister of Communications, he had a relationship with the Sarney government in that sense. One of the key points of convergence of the established power, to justify its power, was Carnival. There was a kind of desire to combine these carnival dynamics, a rhetoric of a festive city to establish its power. Well, the years go by, right?

We also see, on another side, not only through the arts, the artists in music, visual arts, etc. in various other languages, a rhetoric linked to carnival, to the crowd. A rhetoric very much connected to the left also, thinking about the mass, the politicized crowd, the democratic effects of establishing a bond with this field of this large human body, that gives meaning to life in common. So we see the solidification not only through art of this type of rhetoric, but also in the intellectual field - we have names like Antonio Rizzério, Paulo Miguez, Golly Guerreiro, etc. All these people who were on TV and radio discussing these points were concerned with being public intellectuals and issuing opinions.

In short, it is a bit to talk about this universe that forms me, this dispute over a popular carnival between established power and other alternative forces. Brazil was there redemocratizing itself, right, exercising voting power, another type of political mobilization. And in this same context, it bothered me that in the visual arts, there was a certain disassociation produced within institutions, in galleries.

And it bothered me as a draftsman, a person who wanted to work with graphic arts, to be an artist, that I did not see in the circles I frequented, an interest in the everyday life of the city, in general. But in this case, this type of everyday life that I found pulsating, alive, was on TV, was on the radio, was in newspapers, was on people's lips, consumed the interest of people every year, in the economy of the city, it was everywhere, and I saw a certain resistance, especially among those artists passing through the institutional field. And this disinterest in a very specific panorama of the city, despite being understood as a kind of opposition, a kind of repulsion to this axé-system, to this carnival business dynamics, but it was not the only possible scenario.

The lack of dispute in this segment bothered me, even though I understand a side of opposition, but also this disinterest from my colleagues, from the institutional field of the arts, also smelled a bit like social distinction, racism, a resistance to being connected to other communities, other possibilities for discussion, other political fights that were open. So, I began to have a strong desire to be part of and have a contradiction that was more normalized in the universe of the carnival, this afropop carnival in Salvador, and that was also placed primarily in that world of music, etc. As I was saying, I saw in myself this discussion as a power I should exercise over the place I occupied. This not only leads me to draw crowds, carnival, at parties, but also to other types of relationships with this discussion.

It leads me, for example, to my participation with the GIA collective of urban interventions in Salvador that circulated a lot. But I also saw in drawing, which is a more permanently present power in my production as a visual artist, a possibility to discuss the presence of bodies - how they break power dynamics in the city.

We have to remember that Salvador is the city of Dodô and Osmar, inventors of the electric trio, which has this very curious history: when the electric trio was invented in the 40s, 45, the idea of a carnival with music was not established. They invented a car with automotive sound, which today is something very common but at that time was rare or nonexistent. In Salvador, there was no idea of a car with amplified sound attached. They went there and put musical instruments playing, also amplified, with that acoustic box. The point I want to get to is that Dudu and Osmar, when they invented an electric trio, which is a car with these speakers with people on top playing, the car breaks on a hill, and they themselves don’t understand what is happening - the crowd that was having fun keeps pushing the car and pushes against the official parade of the Baiana elites at the time. So with this example, I want to say that the soteropolitan carnival as we know it today has an origin that goes through insubordination, through this conflagratory, somewhat revolutionary character.

All of this mobilizes me; therefore, the works I will produce from all these influences begin to think about the graphic occupation and unoccupation, the relationship of space and body often with their removed scenarios, with this focus on bodies. It is very common to see in my production: there are two series that I believe I have been acting on for a long time, which is Mata - these are normally images of crowds in Carnival, at parties, where there is a greater sense of occupation of space. Typically, they are bodies or groups that are more solitary with that large expanse. Between these two sides, this restlessness for common life and this solitude of the dancer, the person who celebrates the sun, who internalizes.

Well, regarding experiences outside Brazil, I participated in some experiences with the Coletivo Gia. In the GIA collective, I was part of it from 2003 to 2010, and during that period, we participated in a residency at the Cultural Space in Madrid, called Intermediar, which is an art fair that takes place in Spain. At the time, there was a very large mobilization within the political context. Gilberto Gil was Minister of Culture. There was a very positive, collective movement to celebrate this panorama internationally, this Brazilian panorama of the Lula era, and this fair decided to hold the ‘Brazil Year’ with many actions and Brazilian artists.

The GIA collective did, in this institution in Madrid, a residency redacted for the Spanish context of its main projects, having as guests seven Brazilian collectives and seven collectives from Spain. This experience was very positive for me, not only because of the nature of having my collective featured, meeting so many new people, and also with many Brazilian friends who were there with us. The fact that it was a mobilization of this nature, which involved such active participation from the Brazilian State was something that caught my attention at the time to understand how certain social and cultural transformations often occur through public policy, institutional, State interest.

Solo, after winning the award at the Bienal do Recôncavo, here in Bahia, I participated in a residency at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. It was a very interesting experience too. And I think the other curious fact is realizing that this school is a slightly richer version of the Fine Arts school here, from Ufiba, which is also an old school, for the Brazilian context, perhaps of neoclassical origin or inspiration.

So this experience with Gia, with Intermediar, I think was something that mobilized me to think about using a cultural space a bit more open in terms of language, experimentation, type of museum. I think in Brazil we have many similar experiences today, but at the time I didn't know. But things like, thinking from resident artists who exhibit and do residencies for various collectives making their projects. In short, I think it was an experience that fascinated me a lot, and I am very grateful for the political context that promoted it.

• During your artistic journey, was there a moment that generated a significant change in your way of seeing the world or your practice?

Look, as I said before, I have this integration also with music. And, incredibly, I think that the significant moment that I am very happy to have lived was when I was part of a collective, I think between 2016 and 2017; of a collective called Bota Pagodão. Initially, the project was to be a party, organized by Romin, Rafa, and Dias of ÀTTØØXXÁ, which gives rise to this collective, this group, this band that is well-known today. And Bob, Bob from Joy, who was a figure that caught my attention at the time, because we met through a project I did for the Bienal da Bahia.

At the time, Bob had a band called Mr.Bob, which drew a lot of attention for emphasizing audiovisual issues. It was a band that made its pop music to play on the radio, and it was a pagode band, which made its sound quite pop, but had this aspect that was considered more singular, more alternative, that was to produce music, graphic material, quite distinct, and especially music videos. The first pagode video ever produced in a single shot, those things were somewhat restricted to the language of cinema. Suddenly, these guys brought this into the context of pagodão in a unique way, taking advantage of the opportunity to attract attention to their productions through these more singular works.

They were also somewhat at the forefront in the use of electronic elements like samples, media experiences, things that were restricted to a more alternative world of hacker culture. And they managed to assimilate it in a very interesting way to a more pop experience, right? Well, then, together with me, who was this guy producing electronic music, producing something we might call a hybrid, right? Between arrocha, pagode, but a totally electronic thing, at the time. But I was oscillating between that visual arts dimension and music.

We then threw this party called Bota Pagodão, around 2016. The intention was to throw a pagode party in Rio Vermelho, which was the center of soteropolitan revelry at that time, which would be somewhat equivalent to Lapa, perhaps, in Rio de Janeiro, to see if a southern audience identifies with it at all. The party was reasonably successful in its early editions, and things started developing more. We brought in Gabriel Barreto, a videomaker from Sergipe, who also did video mapping and took care of much of the material editing for social media.

At some point, this party, this collective, began to disband. I think at the time even the very language of that collective, which I think is now well established, was very different, alternative. The project ended up not being viable at that moment, but its members went on to pursue other projects. Myself, with the dissolution of the collective, I became a temporary professor at the school of Fine Arts.

• During the process of your works about carnival, are there any dynamics or specific elements that you particularly like to highlight?

A good part of these works that refer to carnival are titled as works of the Mata series. They are these works, in general, utilizing images from carnival collections, things that I took photo of, or things obtained on the internet, or from friends’ collections, from institutions, the State, from corporations, tourism, entertainment in general. I create and reorganize figures that are placed in these images, somewhat fictionalizing and proposing a sort of graphic accumulation.

Well, this series emerges a bit when I discover the first images produced from cellphone cameras around 2009, 2010 on the internet, and I see these records mainly on YouTube. And I am very fascinated by these records because I believe they have the capacity to change both the formal qualities, in terms of textures, in perspective. But also the themes that appear, and I notice there is a kind of re-evaluation of what would be the type of image produced from official records, produced by corporations of tourism, entertainment, and in amalgamation with the State, mainly. And a little of this phenomenon leads me to try to gather styles from these frames, these records, mainly in video. And I start drawing compositions from what I find along the way, making a sort of graphic accumulation.

The point I want to get to is that I think one of the elements I would like to highlight is that, starting from 2009 or 2010, I took a Sony Cybershot camera that I had and disguised it as a can of beer. I took this camera, which is small and fits inside a beer can - I made a tractana and mounted it in a way that I could take photos with this camera hidden in the beer can.

I think that, despite any questions we raise about image rights and such, at the same time there is a question of how I will process these images from my own experience of fun, enjoying the carnival, and with this disguise of a beer can also becomes an element of play and interaction with people. So, many of these photos are made without authorization, with a somewhat diffuse quality of authorization, I end up subverting certain ethical questions, prioritizing this playful side. And I think this is an interesting fact for us to think a little about how the artistic process happens, because until then it was just a game, there was no application... I wouldn’t imagine it would be a project I would spend so much time executing.

I also think it highlights this somewhat cyborg aspect of this work, thinking not only about the idea of portraying people but about the relationship our society has with the production of images and especially with the production of images in this corporate, state field that they refer to primarily within the perspective of consumption, tourism, and business production. And all of this makes me think a little about why these images are produced, for whom, how it reinforces traditions invented by institutional powers. And also the dynamics of how far the idea extends to see the person who does this kind of play which I{