01.01 Art Platform encourages a more ethical, sustainable, and committed approach to collecting contemporary art, with a focus on artists from Africa and its diaspora. The platform proposes a relationship with art and collecting that is grounded by the ethics and aesthetics of the African matrix. 

In Mestre Didi + Abdias do Nascimento developed by Ana Beatriz Almeida, Keyna Eleison, Camilla Rocha Campos and João Simões, 01.01 Art Platform approaches Afro-Brazilian logics explored by iconic Brazilian artists Mestre Didi and Abdias Nascimento. 

African logic systems alive in Brazil greatly influenced Afro-Brazilian artists, creating a unique ethical and aesthetic universe. In the 1970s, during the Brazilian dictatorship, two longtime friends emerged from a culture of proposing decoloniality on their own terms. Mestre Didi, master of ancestor worship and death rites, was introduced to contemporary art through exhibitions such as Magicien de La Terre (1989). Abdias do Nascimento, a global exponent of pan-Africanist thought who lived and developed his artwork between Nigeria and the US during his exile, knew much about the Yoruba, Ga and Ewe philosophies. Both of them participated in Festac ’77 (1977).

Considering that decoloniality is urgent, 01.01 Art Platform is promoting acquisitions at 1-54 that recognise the systems of thought present in these pieces of art. The project matches one work by Mestre Didi with one by Abdias do Nascimento in three distinct arrangements, and establishes feeding the transcendental dimensions of these sets of artworks as a museological practice. This decolonial acquisition project is a partnership with Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Afro Brasileiros (IPEAFRO) and Cida de Nana (high priest of Nana worship and Mestre Didi’s granddaughter).