Written by Tanya Terry, with Photo by Jessica Felicio on Unsplash
Roge’rio Pinto of the U-M School of Social Work opens his mixed-media art installation Colorism on Feb. 17. The installation questions our psychosocial and biological ideas about skin color and treatment of people, based on skin tones, including within racial groups. It comprises works of video, still photography, sculpture and audience interaction.
Pinto was born in Brazil. He grew up in a family where his father had dark skin tones, and his mother had very light skin tones.
“Among all the eight siblings we have all different colors among ourselves,” Pinto shared. “Even within the household, there were differences in how we were treated that I didn’t understand. Later in life, I understood they had something to do with who was lighter and who was darker.”
Pinto never identified himself as a person of color growing up in Brazil because he had light skin.
“In Brazil because skin tone and skin color has been since its colonization a matter of an obsession – we have so many ways to describe skin color in Brazil, and many things get lost along the way,” Pinto stated. “But at the same time it creates a dialogue that is a little more – it’s richer, in the sense that it includes more people in it. It doesn’t polarize the idea of race between Black and white, but it takes into account both the mixing that has happened throughout the history of Brazil. That to me has always been a matter of interest in both my research and my personal life.”
Pinto has been teaching for many years as a professor and helps students to understand what he observed in many of the people that he grew up with and many of the people that he knew when he was a social worker, working with clients.
“What I observed is the outcomes for people who have darker skin tones – and not necessarily only what we identify as Black or African American or Caribbean American-but people with really darker skin tones- that somewhere along the way in the continuum of colors we have empirical evidence today that shows poorer outcomes for people who have darker skin tones.”
Pinto added these outcomes include outcomes within families in the areas of educational outcomes, job outcomes and many outcomes related to health.
“All of this as someone who is an immigrant, who grew up in Brazil, who has lived in the United States, for a long time, I have seen within my own life and my own practice as a social worker a tremendous degree of disparity that has made me very aware that I needed to be talking about it.”
Pinto has discussed the topic of colorism in scientific papers.
But, he stated: “I have found a voice that I think is more efficient, louder and effective in creating art that is also part of my research…It’s really integrating my research abilities with my art practice abilities in creating a message that I think has a different kind of appeal. I think that a larger group of people will be paying attention to it and actually having important conversations as to what it means to be of one or a particular other color.”
Previously, Pinto practiced social work in New York City for many years after moving from Brazil. His clients came from various countries and walks of life, with New York being an extremely diverse city.
“Women, who I knew as friends and as colleagues and also as clients in my social work practice, had very clear ways of describing to me how they felt. For example, they would ask: ‘Should I make my hair straight? Is there anything wrong with my hair?’ Those questions were not my questions…Who is going to be under the sun or avoid the sun. When you’re out in the sun, you get darker, and that can change how you become identified.”
For the exhibit, Pinto interviewed ten different people with many different kinds of social identities including women who identified as Black and/or African American, men who were identified as being Black or African American, men or women from the Middle East, as well as Asian individuals. Pinto considers this piece of the exhibit the most interesting part.
A biologist by trade, Pinto also exposed himself to the sun an entire summer to demonstrate what it looks like before and after and how his social identity can change before and after the summer based simply on how much pigmentation his skin created. Pinto pointed out that “under the microscope, there is no morphological difference” between light and dark skin.
“There is no difference between the cells, the difference is the cells produce more or less pigmentation based on our chromosomes.”
Pinto took about 1,600 photographs on a daily basis in doing to show the transformation that took place from day to day, with the largest organ of the human body: the skin.
“There are videos that poke fun of the very idea that we use the largest organ of the body human beings have, and they use this beautiful thing to denigrate people based on how light or dark it is.”
Pinto pointed out that sometimes people have easier ways of discussing issues about themselves if they are “talking about a third thing.”
“If you are on the floor of a gallery and we are walking around together, sometimes there are feelings and emotions and some social understandings that we might be more likely and more free to share if we are sharing them based on something we have seen together.”
In 2024, Pinto last visited Flint’s Mott-Walsh Collection and was “stunned.”
He also has participated in the Flint Artwalk.
“Every different place that I went to for the Flint Artwalk, there was a different type of conversation that was happening that I don’t think would be happening without having art to help us navigate those conversations,” Pinto said.
These conversations were not all about race or ethnicity.
“One of the things I think the Flint Artwalk does is create a massive possibility of dialogues that otherwise would not happen, and they all are happening the same day, creating a social awareness that otherwise would not be there…I was reminded of the many situations where I was reminded of the power having conversations that otherwise would not have happened unless we were looking at the same kind of thing.”
The Flint Artwalk takes place on the second Friday of every month, from 6 – 9 p.m. For information on the artwalk and other Greater Flint Arts Council (GFAC) events, visit https://www.greaterflintartscouncil.org/events/
For more information about the Mott-Warsh Collection, also based in Flint, visit https://www.exploreflintandgenesee.org/listing/mott-warsh-collection-gallery/575/
Colorism will be featured at U-M’s Duderstadt Center Gallery, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor. Colorism remains on view through March 13, Tuesdays through Fridays and Sundays, 12 noon to 6 p.m. Visitors may meet the artist in person from 1-4 p.m. Mondays Feb. 17 and 24, and March 10.
