My research is based on contact with different territories and cultures. Currently, in the Ribeira Valley (a region in the south of the state of São Paulo, home to great ecological diversity and the largest remaining area of Atlantic Forest), I am working in collaboration with traditional, quilombola and indigenous communities who have an agricultural system that has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries. For these groups, agriculture is not just a source of food, but a way of life and a way of preserving their culture and identity.
Despite agriculture being a central element in the subsistence and history of Brazil, a country colonized for exploitation, the countryside and agricultural work have been systematically marginalized, and the universe of cultivation and the land remains under-represented in art. My work seeks to rescue and revalue this relationship between humans and the land, bringing the family farmer and the ethics of food to the center of the discussion.
Despite agriculture being a central element in the subsistence and history of Brazil, a country colonized for exploitation, the countryside and agricultural work have been systematically marginalized, and the universe of cultivation and the land remains under-represented in art. My work seeks to rescue and revalue this relationship between humans and the land, bringing the family farmer and the ethics of food to the center of the discussion.
In a move that challenges the extractivist and colonial logic that has shaped Brazilian agriculture, my research reflects an active listening to rural subjects and the desire to rescue these voices and experiences, contributing to a necessary dialog about the preservation of traditional cultures, agrarian reform and the impact of ultra-processed foods on society.
Taste as a cultural trait, the result of food's interactions with the world, belongs to the order of the invisible. Although I work with a visual language, I am interested in what is not visible in what I see - flavors, aromas, textures and an immaterial dimension that comes close to what we call “soul.” This animistic relationship with the world strains the separation between subject and object, the basis of modern science and the extractive relationship with the natural world. Through painting, I seek to construct a symmetry in which the beings portrayed can present themselves as subjects, inspired both by the knowledge of native peoples and by the thinking of Nêgo Bispo, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers and Philippe Descola. Although my work refers to a phenomenological dimension, it also has a speculative layer, insofar as I try to access these non-human subjects through painting.
The works resulting from this research were based on a strategy of getting super close to these natural elements, seeking to capture the so-called invisible aspects in them. Even so, these paintings are not landscapes. This genre of painting, historically consolidated in a colonial context, is based on distancing humans from the natural world. I therefore consider these works to be anti-landscapes, since they present a very close view of things, suppressing the characteristic retreat of landscape painting.
These anti-landscapes, with their textures, colors and inability to offer immediate recognition, scramble our perception of things, acting as images that bring us closer and reintegrate us with nature from a sensory perspective. By placing us in a tactile relationship with nature, they make it possible to redistribute the possibilities of the gaze. We are led to experience affects to which we are not exposed on a daily basis, and this change of “place” highlights the political nature of these images.