Workshop Brutal Images by professor and researcher Michelle Sales to take place at ESAP from May 6 to 12, 2026

The workshop Brutal Images, led by professor and researcher Michelle Sales (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), will take place at ESAP between May 6 and May 12, 2026 (excluding the weekend), proposing a critical reflection on the crisis of representation and its contemporary developments.

Through the analysis and discussion of images and films created by racialized artists from different geographical contexts, the course invites participants to reflect on ways of seeing, representing, and imagining within a social context marked by what Achille Mbembe describes as the “combustion of the world.”

Based on a reading of Mbembe’s essay Brutalism, the workshop articulates theoretical reflection and film analysis, promoting a critical approach to contemporary images. It also introduces and discusses key contributions from African and Afro-Brazilian thinkers such as Felwine Sarr, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Kenia Freitas, and Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro.

From an Afrocentric perspective, the program addresses themes such as decolonial politics of representation, the crisis of representation, the legacy of colonialism, and processes of decolonization, as well as issues related to race, racism, and postcolonial studies. It will also explore concepts such as archive and counter-archive, the deconstruction and decolonization of the gaze, feminism in the image, and practices of self-representation.

The workshop will run from 4:30 PM to 8:30 PM, according to the following schedule and rooms:

• May 6, 2026 (Wednesday) – Room A6;
• May 7, 2026 (Thursday) – Room B6;
• May 8, 2026 (Friday) – Room B6;
• May 11, 2026 (Monday) – Room A2;
• May 12, 2026 (Tuesday) – Room A5.

Registration is exclusively carried out via an online form, which will be sent by email to the entire ESAP student community, and is subject to available places.

*Visual Identity: M.A.P.O.