Estudos de cultura material: o tratamento da informação em arte documentada nos azulejos paraibanos em perspectiva com a memória e o patrimônio - séc. XVIII – XX

Abstract

This research treads the fields of material culture, art, memory, and heritage to retrieve information in art historically stored and documented in the ceramic tiles (“azulejos”) in situ in João Pessoa, the capital city of Paraíba, Brazil. Those tiles compose both the civil and religious architecture in the city’s public and private spaces. This research tends to the urgent need of collecting and safeguarding the informational archive present in those artifacts at constant risk of disappearance. Ceramic tiles were born in the Eastern civilizations, and they can be found in several countries of both Western and Eastern worlds. However, it was in Portugal and its colonies that the use of ceramic tiles was in its heyday. As a Portuguese national emblem, ceramic tiles acquired perennial use as a decorative, persuasive, and constructive element in the material culture of Luso-Brazilian heritage, including that of Paraíba. This research’s main objective is to identify and retrieve the memory, heritage, and identity informational value of the ceramic tile archives found in the civil and religious architecture of João Pessoa dated between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. This study represents a contribution to public policies for historical and cultural preservation. From such a perspective, ceramic tiles can be represented as artifacts, symbols, and cultural assets that build and provide information. The scientific trajectory is guided by Information Science and its methodological frameworks for terminology and presentation analysis. Such a framework represents a suitable theoretical-methodological corpus for investigating and retrieving information documented in imagery supports. This research is characterized as qualitative, descriptive, and documental. Additionally, it is complemented by a quantitative approach, seeking a documental, informational, and identity construction. As such, the purpose is to build knowledge that meets the needs of indexation and safeguard and those of its users.