Reverência III [Reverence III] originated the concept of the “Outros Ofícios” series. The composition brings together elements common to Obá's research within a syncretic tradition related to the symbolism of Candomblé. We see a reverent figure holding a compass and an ancestral figure with a cane. There is a connection with anthropometry - the symbolic idea of measuring yourself, of perceiving your own height, your own size.


The drawings from this Outros Ofícios (which translates to “other trades”) series consist of allegorical representations of an entire instrumental apparatus created by Brazilian slave labor in the 18th century. Many of the enslaved Africans sent to the region of Minas Gerais had technical skills and knowledge of metallurgy, architecture and mining that were foreign to Brazil at the time. This creates a perverse link between the tradition of craft and manufacture and a brutal cycle of hard work and production of objects that, by their very function, afflicted and further violated the bodies of these enslaved people, from the saws, mills and bricks, to the chains which kept them captive – a whole technology focused on physical submission.

By stripping the original function of these objects of oppression, the artist subverts history and restores agency and power to the subjects of these drawings.