In contemporary Brazil, so-called “Baianas” have come to embody the main symbols of Bahia for curious tourists. As scholar Christen A. Smith has noted, they signify the region’s place as an “afro-paradise” in the imagination of outsiders. However, from a different angle, their bodily expressions tell more than a story of exoticization for the tourist gaze. They also represent a long legacy of personal expression through dress that spans generations.

For example, as featured in this 1835 lithograph by Johann Moritz Rugendas, Nègre & Nègresse de Bahia, the layered meanings communicated by their panos da costa (ìborùn in Yoruba), used as a shoulder shawl and head wraps reminiscent of the West African gèlè, reach back centuries. In Yoruba culture and religion, textiles can express a powerful system of beliefs, conveying authority, generating life-force, and acting as an agent of personal empowerment. In its semiotic function, cloth powerfully displays social identities. Through pattern composition, motifs, color and texture, cloth records and articulates not only shared memories but also the personal histories of the wearer and creator of the textile.

A potent signifier of West African heritage, prestige, and artistry in Portugal’s American colony and afterwards, panos da costa functioned as a medium of communication and cultural transmission, not only within enslaved communities in Bahia but also between Brazil and Africa. Images such as Ferrez’s 1875 Quitandeiras is an example of painters’ and photographers’ indelible interest in Baianas as curiosities of the Americas.

The recurrence and persistence of these figures in Brazilian visual culture reveal, however, traces and the ongoing force of Afro-Brazilian women’s consciousness. Sartorial choices convey rich histories, as for them, dress objects communicated forms of empowerment and identification which casual observers would not have been privy to, a dignity gently captured in this exquisite drawing of 1950 by Héctor Bernabó (Carybé), Baiana e pescador. ■

In contemporary Brazil, so-called “Baianas” have come to embody the main symbols of Bahia for curious tourists. As scholar Christen A. Smith has noted, they signify the region’s place as an “afro-paradise” in the imagination of outsiders. However, from a different angle, their bodily expressions tell more than a story of exoticization for the tourist gaze. They also represent a long legacy of personal expression through dress that spans generations.

For example, as featured in this 1835 lithograph by Johann Moritz Rugendas, Nègre & Nègresse de Bahia, the layered meanings communicated by their panos da costa (ìborùn in Yoruba), used as a shoulder shawl and head wraps reminiscent of the West African gèlè, reach back centuries. In Yoruba culture and religion, textiles can express a powerful system of beliefs, conveying authority, generating life-force, and acting as an agent of personal empowerment. In its semiotic function, cloth powerfully displays social identities. Through pattern composition, motifs, color and texture, cloth records and articulates not only shared memories but also the personal histories of the wearer and creator of the textile.

A potent signifier of West African heritage, prestige, and artistry in Portugal’s American colony and afterwards, panos da costa functioned as a medium of communication and cultural transmission, not only within enslaved communities in Bahia but also between Brazil and Africa. Images such as Ferrez’s 1875 Quitandeiras is an example of painters’ and photographers’ indelible interest in Baianas as curiosities of the Americas.

The recurrence and persistence of these figures in Brazilian visual culture reveal, however, traces and the ongoing force of Afro-Brazilian women’s consciousness. Sartorial choices convey rich histories, as for them, dress objects communicated forms of empowerment and identification which casual observers would not have been privy to, a dignity gently captured in this exquisite drawing of 1950 by Héctor Bernabó (Carybé), Baiana e pescador. ■