“Many important things have no name”. The author of this quote is Riobaldo, a former thug who recalls his struggles, his fears, and his repressed love in The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, by Guimarães Rosa, a classic of the literature written in the state of Minas Gerais. For other things, however, names abound. One of them, unfortunately, is violence, which bears many faces and strategies.

When we discuss popular art, one term becomes paramount – and, as with every concept, it is disputed here: the people. In By fire and iron, we express our praise to the insubordination the Brazilian people show through their many urgencies, causes, and representations – here, the multiple and diverse colors and nuances, safeguarded by Museu Internacional de Arte Naïf do Brasil, point to the risk of generalizing. The French term naïf, if translated literally, means naive. We invite those who visit this exhibit not to trust this naivety and notice in every piece the density of the accusations present in these canvases. We realize that, as in popular revolts, the colors are a way of changing the world – trusting art, memory, and representation.

The history of our country, Brazil, is marked by struggles that are anything but naive. Countless revolts and conflicts have marked the chapters of our histories. The image of a peaceful country with a friendly population comes undone daily on cellphone screens or the pages of newspapers. It could not have been otherwise: marked by colonial violence, by extractivism, by a project aiming to preserve inequality, and by the debates on the legitimacy of a people against the monopoly of the powers that be, this history, were it told peacefully, would ignore the strength of a population who dared fight for their importance, their power.

By iron and fire, the title of this exhibit, is featured here as a name that designates two things: “A ferro e fogo não dá / Com tanta indiferença vendo a vida passar / Tropeços e tropeços, pedras no meu caminho” [“By iron and fire one cannot live / With so much indifference, watching life go by / Stumbling, stumbling, rocks on my path”]. A song from the popular collective imagery that marks the turn of the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries, a huge hit by the duo Zezé di Camargo and Luciano, the song is a phenomenon of mass culture: it is about the hardships that befall the life of an individual. From the difficult life, in the social sphere, to the desire to have the one you love, in the personal sphere. But this expression was also used in the title of another work that is historically close to the song by the duo of musicians. Published in 1996 in Brazil, With Broadax and Firebrand, a book by Warren Dean, describes the history and the devastation of the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest. Through the book, we are reminded that one of the first actions of the Portuguese when they arrived in Brazil in 1500 was to fell a tree to build a cross for the celebration of the first mass. This act, which is considered foreboding, would have had as a result, according to the author, the first victim of the European occupation of the Atlantic Rainforest, which used to cover vast expanses of the Brazilian territory. In the five centuries that followed, each new economic cycle of development in the country meant another step towards the destruction of a forest spanning one million squared kilometers – which today has been reduced to a shadow of what it once was. This is concerning not only to the millions of Brazilian men and women, but also to the international community, who recognizes the pivotal role this stretch of land plays in terms of the preservation of the biomes and living conditions worldwide.

By iron and fire is a tribute to the insubordination of the Brazilian people, who, throughout the different cycles of their economies and histories, have exercised their alliances in common struggles – from the preservation of their working conditions to the respect for their traditions and beliefs; from the preservation of lands and animals to the protection against police brutality. Such a brave verve, which inhabits restless hearts and minds, enabled accomplishments that have preserved the status of the popular culture – a broad, complex, and stigmatized term – alive as a fire, despite the attempts to tame the diversity of Brazilian popular culture – and, here, armed, the iron metaphor reveals itself.

In this exhibit, we can see together how the landscapes, the geographies, and the representations of nature are marked not only by natural abundance, but also by human action, making the concepts of nature and culture ever more complex. Thus, we notice a country marked by the power of its landscapes abounding with wildlife, but also by the struggle of male and female workers to create a fairer country in terms of opportunities. The artworks made by self-taught artists, without access to formal arts training, though made in the past, attempt to provide density to the intense present moment. It was in the same book by Guimarães Rosa that we could read: “– One day, killing people will fall into disuse.”