Temperature Check is a field research practice operating in two- to three-year cycles, each focused on a specific Afro-diasporic cultural ecosystem. The first cycle focuses on Brazil.

and doing so within a field whose dominant international frameworks have historically centered Anglophone Black experience, leaving Afro-Brazilian artistic production underrepresented in global institutional conversations and outside the diasporic patronage networks that have the potential to sustain it. For this volume, the question that runs through every essay, interview, and field observation is: what does the Afro-Brazilian cultural ecosystem reveal about the relationship between patronage, sustainability, and diasporic connectivity when that patronage seems almost absent? And what becomes possible when it grows?

That research takes the form of a bilingual publication in English and Portuguese, bringing together commissioned essays from ten Afro-Brazilian writers, curators, and scholars; primary field interviews with artists and cultural practitioners across three cities; and original analysis of the structural conditions shaping Black art production and patronage in Brazil.

The Temperature Check Brazil Catalogue exists to activate, cultivate, and deepen the understanding of Black collecting across the African diaspora. It documents what exists — the artists, galleries, institutions, collectors, and spaces building within this ecosystem — makes the case for why this ecosystem is significant and under-patronized, and positions intentional Black collecting, practiced with diasporic awareness, as an act of cultural stewardship. It is a resource, an argument, and an activation tool for Black collectors at every stage of engagement — in Brazil, the United States, and across the diaspora.

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