Design e memória cultural: análise dos grafismos corporais da etnia Potiguara.

Abstract

The present research presents a study about body paintings of the Potiguara ethnicity in a contemporary temporal cut, in which the indigenous community is experiencing a process of cultural intensification. The Potiguara body paintings is recent and emerged due to the need for their own visual language. After that, some indigenous people dedicated themselves to creating graphic patterns which represent their culture, history and religiosity. The Potiguara people resisted cultural interferences in the course of their history and continue with their culture practices, among them the Toré ritual, a sacred moment which connects them to their beliefs. This study aims to analyze indigenous body paintings of the Potiguara ethnicity through the study of shape, seeking to understand their visual patterns and meanings. The research, which has case study and participant observation as methods, has a qualitative approach. The analysis of the interviews subsidized the classification of body paintings and directed the development of a visual inventory of body paintings of the Potiguara ethnicity. The inventory sheets facilitated the study of shape, which had the following authors as theoretical background: Dondis (1997), Munari (1997), Wong (1998), Frutiger (2007), Gomes Filho (2008), Leborg (2015) e Panofsky (2017). It is expected that the discussions raised in this research can help new studies that can bring visibility to the Potiguara ethnicity.