Trajetórias sociais das roupas do Museu Mariano Procópio: tramas e afetos

Abstract

Studies on clothing require new perspectives on cultural redefinitions and the historicity of modes of use within the local reality, so we have proposed to have a look at the clothing Museum Mariano Procopio. A place that mediates the historic use of objects, which, like clothes, established complex approach with the bodies dressed causing several reflections. The collecting is how these clothes were gathered, preserved and are inserted in the present. And, even if not in a reception circuit and parts of the pieces remains as unknowns in the museum, the intention is to show that objects have social life. We seek to minimize the condition of representation that is commonly given to clothing, testing other dimensions of objects and undoing anthological dichotomies to think these clothes as anthropological reflection object. We trace the biography of the objects of our interest from the collection of Alfredo Ferreira Laje, in which we find three universes of clothes: royal robes, military costumes and female outfits. This subdivision refers to the female context of a time charged with singularities, the nineteenth century, period of formation of this collection of clothing and transformation of clothes seduction logic. It is when the fashion dimension acts, when it makes itself present and, sometimes, breaks. During the field work, we seek to understand the social relations that objects mobilize in their life trajectories, especially its current stage. The clothes, as much as other objects, are vivid and interest to the new dialogues of the museum search, in a process of reinventing itself, defying the purpose of modernity that attempt to survive the twenty-first century. The social relationships lived in the present, even away from the original functions for which the clothes were designed, seem to show how these objects continue dispersing different actions symbolic and / or sensitive, taking into account the fact that we attribute human values to things and, also, the reverse situation. The unique museum reality gives an intrinsic value to the time of existence of these pieces, revealing the capacity that makes objects more than mediators between men and the world, but participants in the same vital flow.