Amsterdam-based artist Clara Saito shares parts of an ongoing research project connecting the colonial history of the Netherlands with the history of Northeast Brazil, where she was born. The presentation comes at the end of a research trip that brought her back to Brazil, where she followed the traces of Clara Camarão, a Potiguara Indigenous woman who successfully led a women’s army against Dutch colonizers in 17th-century Northeast Brazil. Merging biographical notes with historical accounts, this informal lecture-performance opens up questions around armed resistance, betrayal, and social organization.

For the presentation, Clara Saito has invited Baque Flamingo, an Amsterdam-based percussion group dedicated to Afro-Brazilian cultures of resistance, founded on May 13, 2019. They perform Maracatu de Baque Virado, an artistic expression rooted in the popular and carnival cultures of Pernambuco, Brazil. Emerging from Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous spiritual traditions, as well as the coronation rituals of the Kongo people, their music brings aspects of this history to life.