As terras de Monge Belo: as práticas locais e o design participativo relacional na produção dos colorantes naturais

Abstract

Maranhão stands out as one of the states that houses one of the highest rates of occurrences of quilombola communities in Brazil, a scenario prone to conflicts related to land issues. In contrast to this situation, many quilombola communities also stand out as places of resistance through their traditional knowledge and the richness of biodiversity in their territories. The quilombo of Monge Belo is one such example. Located in the municipality of Itapecuru Mirim, in Maranhão, the community's main economic activity is subsistence farming and it is known for the work carried out by a group of women who paint cisterns using mineral dyes. Through the practices of correspondences, as introduced by Ingold (2013), a relational way of being in the world, we had our first contacts with the group of women and the material. In this way, we identified research opportunities by recognizing local resources (dyes and mordants) as potential raw materials to be used in this production, thus promoting the environmental dimensions of sustainability and autonomy in the production of natural dyes. Therefore, the present research aimed to contribute, through participatory relational design and following the principles of design anthropology (Gatt and Ingold, 2013), to the systematization and co-creation of processes involving the production of natural dyes in the community of Monge Belo, with a focus on the productive autonomy of women, guided by the principle of autopoiesis by Escobar (2016). For this purpose, we adopted the Material Driven Design (MDD) approach proposed by Karana et al. (2015) as our methodological framework, which addresses both tangible and intangible aspects of a material and focuses on the experiences derived from this interaction. In support of these stages, we conducted tests in laboratories (UFMA and ED-UEMG) related to colorimetry, color fixation, and fabric morphology before and after dyeing, providing us with a more technical and procedural understanding of the materials studied. Finally, we returned to the community to prototype dyeing with the dyes and mordants, thus completing the process of knowledge exchange. The results are presented through data triangulation and demonstrate the insights gained by researchers and co-researchers in the field, combined with the presented theory presented, resulting in a new type of knowledge. Through this collaborative process in the field, the effectiveness of Monge Belo's natural dyes and mordants could be attested as potential raw materials in the natural dyeing process, thus contributing to environmental sustainability and the process of women's autonomy, as well as new other possibilities were listed for future studies.