Infinite colors of the human skin | Angélica Dass | TEDxMadrid

For her project Humanae, Angélica Dass, Brazilian artist and photographer, has taken more than a thousand portraits of people from different parts of the world, by which she demonstrates that labels like red, white, brown and yellow are quite inaccurate to define human skin.

More information at: humanae.tumblr.com

The first thing which lets me down
when I am nervous is my Spanish.

(Laughter)

Well, let's see.

Due to my origin, the social and ethnic
reality in which I was born,

I have aways thought about
the classification of colors

associated with race this way:
red, white, black and yellow.

A reduction of something which,
to me, is really much richer.

This is my family,
adopted members included.

I carry in my blood,
or at least in my eyes,

the distinct colors that make
the Brazilian population.

Among them,
I've never felt different.

But, when far from them,
I sometimes do.

That's why I came up with the idea

to develop a catalogue of colors,
but only real colors.

To do so, I wanted to find
a secure mode.

Something that would be
an industrial system,

where all the colors
are of equal importance.

Therefore I chose Pantone scales,

in which primary colors have
the same importance as mixed ones.

Photos using this color system

are made in a very simple
and easy to reproduce way.

On white background.

Whan i take portraits
on a white background,

I always pick a 11x11 pixel
square from the nose.

And then I apply this color
to the background

and look for an appropriate color
in the Pantone system.

The choice of the nose is intentional,

because it is the first part of body
that changes color because of sunbathing,

or when we are frozen,
or as a result of drinking too much...

So that no one is the same color.

Like this man.

From the very beginning, the project
was intended to be realised online,

globally, with public announcements.

Absolutely everyone is welcomed
to participate in the project,

which has got so much empathy
from the public,

and, finally, all these people
are our new identities.

They are online identities.

This project, which was started
in a customary way

and has taken huge proportions
because I'm always short of colors,

was planned as a project
moving across all five continents.

The post remarkable thing
about this great project

is the number of works
which have risen from it.

It's an unfinished project,
yet it's producing things.

One is Kyle Mathewson,

professor of the University of Illinois,

who uses the portraits from Humanae

for his physiology classes.

This is John Seymour,
John Math Guy, who has decided

to do a statistic analysis
of the colors in a scientific way

to find out the percentage of each one,
whether there more of one than the others.

This is Emily Hardin' brilliant work,
who is interested

in a formal range of faces
presented in the project.

I publish the photos on Tumblr,
she draws them on paper.

From Los Ángeles, we are entirely
connected by this unfinished job.

Here is the work of Ana Vasconcelos,
a teacher who lives in São Paulo,

who presents the project to her students,

she gives them dyes to mix
then they paint with them.

It is to create this personal
and untransferable identity

and completely destroy what is known
as a "flesh color" pencil .

The point is that the pencil
is not of "body color", not at all.

(Applause)

One of the most emotional things
and one of the main rewards,

also going back to
what I said about my family,

are the emails I get from
families with adopted children

about this family game
about identifying those pictures

realizing that
all the colors equalize us.

This is the main reward
of the project.

This family is wonderful.

I always say that with Humanae,
I've learned to be a mere catalyst,

I am a channel through which
people partly tell my story,

and keep telling their own too,
because they tell what I'm saying.

Humanae is like an invitation to press
a "share" button inside our brain

and equalize us all through tints.

There are 1076 of us and I hope
there will be thousands and thousands.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)