Bitch Be Humble

Developed during Beatriz Manteigas’ residency in the Amazon rainforest, Bitch Be Humble reflects on her experience of encountering Brazil as a Portuguese person, and the colonial lens through which she had understood and approached the country. Being in the Amazon prompted a confrontation with the histories, assumptions and inherited perspectives that shaped her relationship to the Brazilian landscape. The title becomes both a provocation and a self-address: a reminder to question the authority of the gaze through which places and cultures are encountered. The work considers what it means to recognise the colonial histories embedded within that gaze, and to become more conscious of one’s own position within them. Through this process, the Amazon becomes a space for questioning perception, belonging and inherited knowledge. Bitch Be Humble reflects on the possibility of looking again with greater awareness of the histories that shape how we see, and of the power involved in looking at itself. (Graphite, artgraf and masking tape on paper).