LUZIA
by Bernardo de Britto, 2019
Museu da Ciência – Universidade de Coimbra
Luzia is the name given to the oldest human remains ever found in South America. They belonged to a woman in her twenties who lived in the region now known as the state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil, roughly 12,500 years ago. In September 2018, a fire of terrifying proportions destroyed most of the collection of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, where her skeleton was kept. The institution, which had just turned 200 years old, had for decades suffered from a lack of the funding and maintenance needed to house and preserve the oldest and most important natural history collection in the Portuguese-speaking world. More than a tragedy foretold, the fire that deprived humanity of 90% of a collection containing records and studies of now-extinct Amerindian languages, a vast Egyptology collection, and specimens of Brazilian fauna and flora, amounted to a crime against memory.
And yet, Luzia (2018–2019), by Brazilian artist Felippe Moraes, goes beyond a tribute to the collection of a destroyed museum. This archaeological artifact is one of the principal sources for understanding the first wave of population migration into South America, which took place around 16,000 years ago. By raising this name onto the wall of the Museu da Ciência at the University of Coimbra, the artist adds thousands of years of South American population history to that institution. Luzia — whose name etymologically means “luminous” — is projected in light into the dimness of one of the natural history wing’s rooms at the museum. The light that projects her name illuminates not only historical data and physical space, but also brings us, symbolically, the idea of a woman as an originary force, whose very existence unveils the history of a continent’s population.
The history of humanity, written mostly by conquerors, has always been concerned with hiding and dehumanizing the conquered and the oppressed. But it is necessary to understand the urgency of telling an older story. We live in dark times, in which the denial of evolution, of science, and of the history of minorities is encouraged by conservative governments around the world. Felippe Moraes’s work sets out to illuminate Portugal with the ancestral force of Luzia, revealing the historical value of a South America that was sovereign for thousands of years and free of any European conquest — a historical rescue made possible only through the advancement of science.
Among the ruins of the Brazilian national museum, researchers managed to recover 80% of her skull. Luzia has no interest in being erased, forgotten, or destroyed, despite the neglect and every attempt to make that happen. She survived more than 10,000 years buried underground, then a devastating fire, and she will keep resisting and illuminating the existence of the Marielles, Matheusas, Claudias, and Marianas who persist, tirelessly bringing to humanity, in the feminine, a sense of history, truth, and knowledge.
Bernardo de Britto
February 2019
Curatorial text for the installation LUZIA (2019) by Felippe Moraes at the Museu da Ciência, University of Coimbra, Portugal.