Benoît: Food and hunger have been central to your work, throughout your career. In the cultural context of Brazil, the poet Oswaldo de Andrade laid the foundation for these notions with his Manifesto Antropófago (1928), a central text for 20th century Brazilian art, in which he argued that ‘only cannibalism unites us’ – a reference to the country’s colonial past.
Anna Maria: Es bellisimo. All artists, Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, and their Neo- Conrete Manifesto, that’s where they came from. To a certain extent, the Manifesto Antropófago proposed to leave out European art. Which is impossible, as the colonial legacy is so deeply rooted. But, Oswald de Andrade proposed an art with Brazilian roots, and that is beautiful. He suggested that native Americans were to eat the colonizers to incorporate them and their European ideals in order to excrete new, evolved, forms of art and culture.

There are some incredible paradoxes in this notion. Enemies have to be eaten to be dominated but also incorporated. These are beautiful philosophical metaphors. My Super 8 film In-Out (Antropofagia) (1973) was inspired by the manifesto. In this work, I wanted to eat the enemies of freedom. I learned to read manifestos very late, you know. I never finished my studies – the [institutions] lie and say I’ve graduated but it’s not true, I never finished. I’m an avid reader, but not always of art. I don’t know if I’ve answered your question?

Benoît: In part, yes. But I also wanted to ask you about your own relationship to food and hunger, which doesn’t have its origins in Brazil but in the post-war context of Europe, more specifically of Italy.
Anna Maria: Do you know how many we were at the table to eat? Thirteen. That was the greatest university for me, this table where there was never enough food. That was my apprenticeship in life, humanity and knowledge. And for my parents, it was important that we had knowledge. Eso fue una riqueza [That was a luxury]. We didn’t have much food but we had knowledge. When my mother was upset, she told us off in Latin!

Benoît: Scary. Mine swore in Flemish, that’s when we knew we were in trouble.
Anna Maria: Hunger, for those who haven’t experienced it, is an abstraction. It doesn’t exist. That is a historical problem which humanity has never been able to resolve. In our civilisation, there are always people who are famined. That’s what I brought with me, to Brazil. The experience of ‘not having’ accompanied me, and continues to accompany me. And yes, I brought it from Italy. My unconscious and my memory very much nourished my work. Even now that I live from my work, it’s something that touches me deeply. The immigration crisis and the levels of intolerance, I think it’s horrible. It’s terrible, everything that’s happening in the world right now. It’s like there is no way out.

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