Ilumiaras

To materialize his thinking, Ariano Suassuna created the concept of Ilumiara. These are magnetized places which emanate creative energy, and are also spaces for celebration and intellectual structuring. The writer has already used the neologism “lumiara” to refer to the amphitheaters formed, in the decade of 1970, of chiseled stones or paintings made by the first inhabitants of Brazil that were, possibly, used as places of worship.

Years later, he began to call these places ilumiaras, extending the term to identify different artistic sets that emerged from the integration of several genres (painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.) and that could be understood as places to celebrate Brazilian culture. Thus, while he was the Secretary of Culture of Pernambuco, he created the Ilumiara Zumbi, in Olinda, as a meeting point for the Maracatu Piaba de Ouro, and the Ilumiara Pedra do Reino, in São José do Belmonte, on the small farm where the two huge natural stones after which it is named are located as well as some sculptures by Arnaldo Barbosa.

Ariano also considers as Ilumiaras, the Pedra do Ingá, the Acauhan farm, both in Paraíba, where he lived as a child, and A Coroada, his family home, in Recife, where sculptures, tiles and ceramics chosen by the writer are kept. The Ilumiara Jaúna, in Taperoá, Paraíba, was left by Suassuna as a mission for his son, Manuel Dantas Suassuna, and proposes a re-reading of the inscriptions on the Pedra do Ingá.