Bio

Nicola Lo Calzo (Turin, 1979) is an Italian photographer, curator, and researcher whose work focuses on themes of memory, identity, and colonial and postcolonial histories. His long-term documentary projects often explore how communities preserve or reclaim cultural memory in the face of marginalization and historical erasure. Since 2010, he has been working on the Cham/Kam project, a multi-year photographic series exploring the legacy of slavery and resistance across the Atlantic world — from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas.

Lo Calzo’s work is deeply rooted in field-based and participatory research, and he frequently collaborates with local communities, historians, and institutions. His projects have been exhibited internationally and published in major outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Le Monde, Libération, Internazionale, and National Geographic. In addition to his photography, he is active in academia and curatorial practice, often intersecting visual storytelling with scholarship on colonial history, memory politics, and queer and decolonial thought.

News:
Exhibition: Nego Fugido, mémoires quilombolas at MAFRA Museu Afro Brasileiro - UFBA in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil
until Februzary 6, 2026

nicola lo calzo
@nicolalocalzo

Nego Fugido
Project Statement

Nego Fugido is a performative practice held in July in the quilombola community of Acupe, in the Baía de Todos os Santos, Brazil. Since the late nineteenth century—after the abolition of slavery in 1888—it has reenacted both the violence of enslavement and the struggle of enslaved people for liberation. The performance condenses multiple historical moments: the capture of Africans, the resistance of fugitive slaves pursued by the capitão do mato and his cazadores, and the symbolic overthrow of the colonial order leading to collective emancipation.

Today, Nego Fugido is not only a performative tradition but also an intellectual and political space for reflecting on Afro-descendant identity and memory. The opening of the Casa do Nego Fugido in 2021 responds to this need for creation, preservation, and transmission of local knowledge.

This work was produced in collaboration with the community of Acupe and Assoçiacao Cultural Nego Fugido as part of my doctoral research (2020–2025) at CY Cergy Paris Université / ENSAPC and forms part of my ongoing research project KAM started in 2010. The KAM project explores memories of resistance to slavery and colonialism across West Africa, the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean. Memory, in KAM, a framework for uncovering subaltern narratives, challenging dominant historiographies, and producing counter-narratives through photography.

Nicola Lo Calzo

From Ashes and Fire
text by Ioana Mello (curator)

Nicola Lo Calzo’s exhibition Nego Fugido offers a sensitive and committed immersion into a process of reaffirming freedom.

Each year, within the quilombola** community of Acupe, Brazil, the Nego Fugido takes place: a ritual performance that re-enacts the dehumanization of slavery and their struggle for emancipation. Like living tableaux, this staging brings forth, from the perspective of the subjugated, an embodied memory of oppression and resistance.

In contrast to dominant narratives, Nego Fugido constructs a sovereign counter-narrative, carried by those whose history has long been denied or erased. Through this practice, the community reclaims its past, revisits it through the lens of the present, and offers a more complex reading of colonial heritage—still present in Brazil and beyond. The performance of Nego Fugido thus acts as a gesture of memorial mediation, at the intersection of art, politics, spirituality, and transmission. It challenges us collectively: whose voices shape our historical memory? Who decides which stories shape the history of a nation?

By showcasing this practice, artist-researcher Nicola Lo Calzo reveals a frequently silenced part of history: a living memory not found in books, but expressed through bodies, gestures, songs, and rituals. This series is part of the KAM project, initiated in 2010, which explores Atlantic memories of slavery and the forms of resistance that have emerged. Lo Calzo always adopts a process of attentive co-creation, far removed from any voyeuristic or exoticizing stance. His work is rooted in a relationship of listening and collaboration with the community, aiming to build shared understanding.

In the exhibition, layers of memory and spirituality take shape through a visual constellation: photographs, videos, sounds, archives, and symbolic objects interact to convey the depth of this practice. Visitors are guided by the red thread of Exu, a complex figure in Afro-Brazilian religions and a conductor of essential elements of the exhibition. Exu is associated with Nego Fugido and appears as a personification of challenge, as well as an intermediary between gods and humans.

Nego Fugido is a space for reinventing the past, an act of self-determination in response to paternalistic discourses of so-called racial democracy or stereotypical representations propagated by a superficial multiculturalism. Through imagery and installation, this exhibition invites a different view of the history of slavery and its contemporary resonances. As part of the Brazil – France 2025 Season, we aim to deepen the dialogue between the two cultures and contribute to building a plural, living collective memory, deeply rooted in the realities of the communities that uphold it.

This exhibition at MAFRO is organized as part of the Brazil-France 2025 Season and follows previous presentations in Paris (Centre d’Art Ygrec), Brasilia (Alliance française de Brasilia and National Museum of Republic), and Rio (FotoRio).

* A quilombo refers to a community formed by fugitive enslaved people in remote areas, such as the Amazon rainforest or the sertão.