FROM QUIPU TO SLAM:

BODY WRITINGS AND POETIC INSURGENCIES IN CECÍLIA VICUÑA AND LUIZA ROMÃO

Abstract

This article investigates how Cecilia Vicuña and Luiza Romão construct insurgent poetics through the body, orality, and performance, activating languages that confront colonial, patriarchal, and Eurocentric paradigms. It is justified by the need to understand the body as a locus of subaltern knowledges and as a means of symbolic reinscription. From a qualitative and interpretative approach, the study analyzes the verbo-visual materiality of Vicuña’s quipus and quipoems, and Romão’s photo-performances and poems, especially in Sangría and Também Guardamos Pedras Aqui (We Also Keep Stones Here). The theoretical framework is built upon authors of decolonial, counter-colonial, and feminist epistemologies, such as Antônio Bispo dos Santos, Aníbal Quijano, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sueli Carneiro, Leda Maria Martins, and Conceição Evaristo. The study demonstrates that through the use of thread, voice, image, and above all, the body, both artists construct sensitive epistemologies that establish alternative modes of knowledge production and circulation.