Summary

Often, when we wish to refer to the presence of the horrors of a past of slavery in the contemporary world, we evoke the metaphor of the wound. To experience this figure of speech is what Ayrson Heráclito’s performance proposes, standing on the border between allegory and enactment. Participants are invited to put on a cape made of dried meat, on which they marked with hot iron. The sensations, noises, smells, and images created by the action evoke the practice of marking slaves with hot iron, and elicit the collective discomfort in the heart of the Western civilization, seeking a deeper understanding of history and an opportunity to open renewed horizons.