Bronze sculpture
2.5 m in diameter; 800 kg
By presenting the monumental head of a bandeirante severed from its body, the work critically revisits one of the most celebrated figures in Brazil's official history. In contrast to the monuments erected in honor of these colonial explorers from São Paulo, the sculpture challenges the heroic version built around them and recalls that their actions were tied to the enslavement of Indigenous peoples, the destruction of quilombos, and the violence of colonial expansion. The sculpture relates directly to a territory marked by the legacy of colonization, slavery, and the sugarcane economy. By symbolically toppling an established hero, Flávio Cerqueira prompts visitors to see Brazilian history as a permanent field of dispute and reinterpretation.
Flávio Cerqueira
São Paulo, Brazil, 1983
Lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil
At Usina de Arte: Tinha que Acontecer (2016); Na Medida do Impossível (2014); Uma Palavra que Não Seja Esperar (2018)
Holding a master's degree in Visual Arts from Unesp, Cerqueira works with traditional sculptural techniques such as lost-wax bronze casting, with the human figure as protagonist. His works build narratives about identity and power drawn from everyday situations. By questioning the relationship between space and viewer, the artist freezes the instant as a fragment of an open story. In this interplay between reality and fiction, the public is invited to complete the meaning and become co-author of the narrative.
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