Letreiramento de quadrinhos na Amazônia: processos de resistência no letreiramento de Tiêe Santos

Abstract

This research seeks to understand how cultural relations and identifications shape the worldview of an Amazonian artist and influence artistic practice related to the standardized language of comics. We pursue this understanding through the lettering (lettering) produced by the artist Tiêe Santos in various popular comics that are narratives of resistance in the Brazilian Amazon. We highlight the importance of the lettering approach for the language of comics, a relatively new theme in the academic, artistic, and communicational fields. Comic books, as objects of dissemination of knowledge, cultures, and experiences, hold discourses that reflect a specific vision (Eisner, 2010; Postema, 2018), and although they have been shaped by the market with distinctive characteristics, they can be shaped by cultural agents. To achieve the proposed understanding, the lettering of three comic strips produced by the Manaus-based artist Tiêe Santos will be analyzed, according to the narrative analysis processes of Motta (2013) in dialogue with the concept of Thierre Groenteen (2015) and Ellen Lupton (2020), guided by the following question: What influences shaped the language of comics in the Brazilian Amazon and how do the symbolic influences of Amazonian culture resist and manifest themselves in the comic book lettering of the artist Tiêe Santos? Based on the theoretical works of Eisner (2010), Postema (2018) and Piekos (2021) to conceptualize the language of comics and their lettering, and dialogues with the works of Paes Loureiro (1995), Porto-Gonçalves (2024) and Castro (2018) for reflections on Amazonian societies and visualities, it is hoped to contribute to a deeper understanding of aspects of comic book production in the Amazon and especially to the appreciation and lettering of comics, as well as those who create them.