"Chêro, chêroso!": imagens do vestir em "Vendedora de cheiro" (1947) de Antonieta Feio

Abstract

The research investigates, based on the visual construction of the character Vendedora de Cheiro (1947), by Antonieta Feio, focusing on the analysis of clothing and body adornments as markers of cultural and social identity of popular women in Belém. The thesis, which is transdisciplinary in nature, articulates art history, visual culture, material culture (accessories) and fashion studies from a decolonial perspective, drawing on a corpus composed of pictorial works, photographs, travellers' narratives and literary texts produced between the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The analysis of the figure represented, in dialogue with documentary records and observations of contemporary erveiras, highlights the permanence and re-signification of afro-indigenous aesthetic practices, revealing an Amazonian feminine ethos that resists historical invisibility. In this way, the visuality constructed around the Vendedora de Cheiro not only records a specific social and economic practice, but also expresses ways of existing, resisting, and belonging for women from Pará. Their way of dressing and adorning themselves is not only functional or decorative, but acts as a symbolic language that communicates ancestral knowledge and ties to the land. Clothing thus becomes a field of identity affirmation, where working with herbs and scents is intertwined with the living memory of other women who, over time, have built their own ways of occupying urban spaces. By treating the character as a historical subject, the thesis contributes to constructing a history of art based on peripheral female figures, confronting eurocentric paradigms and revealing how the artist negotiates representations of the Amazon by re-inscribing black women with afro-indigenous features as protagonists of their own visuality.