At first glance, Brazilian cities still look like postcards from a colonial past. The statues that rise over squares, the street names etched into concrete, the architecture of order and hierarchy—they all whisper the same tired story: that whiteness built the nation. But beneath the surface, another Brazil is asserting itself. It drums, it dances, it paints walls, it sings in public squares. And slowly, it is reclaiming the right to be seen.

For centuries, Afro-Brazilian culture has survived in the shadows, criminalized, folklorized, or turned into commodity. Samba was once outlawed. Candomblé practitioners hid their orixás behind Catholic saints. Capoeira was punished with jail time. Even after the official abolition of slavery in 1888, Black life in Brazil was structurally pushed out of public visibility—confined to the periphery, both geographically and symbolically.

Today, that invisibility is being dismantled, one public intervention at a time.

Painting the Sky of Oxóssi

On July 19th in São Paulo, a monumental painting titled Céu de Oxóssi—Sky of Oxóssi—will be inaugurated in a terreiro open to the public. The project, idealized by anthropologist and babalorixá Rodney William and executed by artist Bruno Hatanaka, is more than an aesthetic gesture. It is a spiritual-political act. In the cosmology of Candomblé, Oxóssi is the hunter, the guardian of the forest, the orixá of abundance and wisdom. By painting his sky, the organizers are not just decorating a wall; they are restoring cosmology to public consciousness, inserting the sacred into the secular.

For Rodney William, whose life bridges academic research and Afro-religious leadership, this is about occupying space with intention. It is about affirming that Afro-Brazilian spiritualities and cultural practices are not relics of the past, but living systems of knowledge that deserve to be seen, celebrated, and protected.

Monuments of Memory, Sites of Resistance

This is not an isolated event. Across Brazil, Afro-Brazilian cultural affirmation is moving into the streets, the plazas, and the parks. It is challenging the historical logic of erasure with acts of visibility.

In São Paulo, the Monumento à Mãe Preta has become a rallying point for Black activists and religious communities. For decades, the statue—a tribute to the enslaved Black women who breastfed and raised both Black and white children—stood in silence, overlooked by a city unwilling to confront its racial history. Now, on November 20th, Black Consciousness Day, the monument becomes a living altar, covered in flowers, draped in fabrics, surrounded by drums and prayer.

In Rio de Janeiro, the Cais do Valongo, once buried under asphalt, has been excavated and recognized by UNESCO as the most significant site of African arrival in the Americas. Every year, Afro-Brazilian religious leaders perform rituals of remembrance at the site, pouring libations and singing for ancestors who arrived in chains. What was once a site of trauma has become a sacred space of reflection and continuity.

Soundscapes of Freedom

Not all cultural affirmation takes the form of monuments. Sometimes it’s about music—loud, unapologetic, and in the open.

In Salvador, Recife, and Rio, Baile Black parties have returned to public squares, reviving the spirit of the 1970s Black Rio movement. DJs spin James Brown, Tim Maia, samba-rock, and funk from the favelas, transforming concrete spaces into zones of Black joy and communion. The dancing is not just entertainment—it is a form of historical reparation, a declaration of presence in a city that still wants to push Black bodies to the margins.

Likewise, in samba de roda circles, elders and youth gather in parks and plazas to sing, clap, and play the pandeiro. These gatherings revive the communal memory of quilombo culture—the self-governed spaces of fugitive enslaved people who resisted colonial domination. Each chorus is a reminder: we were never silent; you just refused to listen.

Walls That Speak

Urban art has also become a canvas for Afro-Brazilian affirmation. In Belo Horizonte, São Paulo, and Recife, collectives like AfroGrafiteiras are painting murals that celebrate orixás, Black heroines, and quilombola leaders. These images disrupt the colonial visual landscape, replacing whitened versions of history with bold, colorful tributes to ancestral knowledge.

Graffiti, once dismissed as vandalism, is now part of a new visual language of resistance, reclaiming the city’s walls as archives of Black memory.

Spaces of Learning, Spaces of Power

Cultural centers are also playing a role in this public renaissance. The Afro Brasil Museum in São Paulo’s Ibirapuera Park holds over 6,000 works highlighting Black contributions to Brazilian history, art, and thought. It stands as a permanent corrective to historical omission, a space where Black intellectuality and creativity are foregrounded, not footnoted.

Other centers, like the Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra in Santos and the Casa Preta in Salvador, offer workshops, exhibitions, and community gatherings, ensuring that Afro-Brazilian culture is not just celebrated but actively cultivated for future generations.

A New Threat: Erasure in Real Time

Yet the struggle for space is not over. Today’s acts of cultural affirmation are powerful, but they are also vulnerable.

Brazil remains a country where religious intolerance against Afro-Brazilian traditions is on the rise—and not just in the shadows of social prejudice. The country’s rapidly growing evangelical movement is actively engaged in a systematic campaign to erase Afro-Brazilian spiritual practices from public life. In some neighborhoods, terreiros have been vandalized or forced to close under pressure from fundamentalist groups. Sacred ceremonies are disrupted. Statues of orixás are defaced. Intimidation often masquerades as "spiritual warfare," creating a climate of fear and silencing.

This is not just religious intolerance—it is cultural deletion in real time, a new chapter in Brazil’s long history of colonial violence.

A New Cartography of Presence

Despite these challenges, Brazil is, slowly, redrawing its cultural map. The old symbols of colonial grandeur still stand, but they are being joined—and in some cases, confronted—by new symbols rooted in Black resilience and Afro-diasporic memory.

When the sky of Oxóssi is painted on the walls of a São Paulo terreiro this July, it won’t just be a mural. It will be a declaration: we are here, and we will not disappear.

This is the art of becoming visible on one’s own terms. And in Brazil, that may be the most radical act of all.