While Anthropophagy, from the Greek anthropos, “human being” + phagein, “to eat”, can mean either to practice cannibalism, self-cannibalism, or to have human flesh digested by beasts, symbolically the term is also represented by the Eucharist, the spiritual eating of the body and blood of Christ. Referencing Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade own “Manifesto Antropófago” published in Revista de Antropofagia, Ano 1, No. 1, maio de 1928, artist Anna Maria Maiolino, equates the devouring of the human intellect, a conceit for “ingesting” knowledge, as the ultimate communion with the world and each other. This text is dated 24/07/2009.
“I am the faecal ball resulting from the Brazilian anthropophagic banquet: my work and I are like the Tupi people. ‘What collided with the truth was clothing, that impermeable layer between the inner and the outer worlds.’ They took them off at the banquet, I was left naked.
‘In the country of the great snake’I finally managed not to use any grammar. Mixed in my digestive system were the cultures of my native land – Calabria, in the south of Italy – and of the Tupi-Guarani land.”
