“Bandits & Heroes, Poets & Saints: Popular Art From the Northeast of Brazil” explores the blending of immigrant culture and art with indigenous and colonial traditions.

While the description makes the exhibit sound like it could be about Hawaii’s plantation era, it isn’t, notes organizer and local exhibit liaison Paula Major, a University of Hawaii-West Oahu associate professor of education. The art in the exhibition is concerned with a Brazilian region where Africans were brought in as slaves to work at sugar plantations, and explores the ways Africans, indigenous people and settlers contributed to the region’s culture.

The opening of the exhibit also coincides with Black History Month in February, Major notes.

Northeast Brazil has the largest population of people of African descent outside of Africa. More than 10 times more Africans were brought in bondage into Brazil than into the United States.

“Despite the distance between South America and Hawaii, I want our community to make comparisons and recognize similarities,” said Major, in a statement.

The exhibit includes more than 200 works of art by more than 50 artists, including photography, poetry, prints, sculptures, paintings and sacred objects.

It has three parts: “The Land & Its People,” addressing the history of plantations and slavery in colonial Brazil; “Expressions of Faith,” presenting the colorful processions, festivals and pilgrimages connected with the African-Brazilian religion of Candomble, which combines African tradition with Catholicism; and “Poetry, Celebration & Song,” introducing folk legends and the literatura de cordel — literature on a string — created by singing poets.

The exhibit was organized by nonprofit arts presenter Con/Vida—Popular Arts of the Americas and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, both of Detroit. It is a National Endowment for the Humanities on the Road showcase, brought to Hawaii with support from the Hawaii chapter of The Links Inc.