How to grow aerial roots
How can a tree manage to stay suspended in the air? When I first came across this palm tree, the paxiúba, I wanted to see it in its natural habitat. I thought I could only truly understand its existence by travelling to where it grows. But you can’t just wander into the forest without requesting permission. You can’t enter the forest without understanding what goes on there.
I took a trip to the Tupana River, where I spent eight days with the paxiúbas and did some drawings. The sculptures created for the Bienal are a memento of that time together—not an exercise in mimicry, but in shared experience. The paxiúbas taught me what it means to break away and put down new roots, what it means to be in the shadows and seek the light. How to build stability, how to stand firm even when unbalanced in some areas.
Soaking-wet feet
This moment in my life is special because I’ve moved from Salvador to São Paulo, where I’ve set up my studio. As my body moves, the process of creating my work moves with it. In other words, alongside the new aesthetics I’m exploring and my desire to create art, this body is moving toward a place where I can be free. We’re speaking of a work that moves, so I imagine and wish that people’s relationship with it will be shaped by this sense of movement.
I often say that I’ve been walking with soaking-wet feet. Water has been shaping me as a person, as I come to understand its movements of serenity and rebellion. So my work is not only about creating beauty and comfort, but also about creating conflict and harshness, about contemplating destruction, inaction, and the middle ground. I believe this is the journey of a personal challenge, not only in an artist’s perception, but that of anyone.
Through this work, I’ve learned what it’s like to live with the Tupana, a river that completely mirrors the sky. A river that flows eight meters above the trees, sheltering a forest. Right now, I want to stay within this river.
Materiality
I began my research and conceptual work with the lines and words that gradually take shape in my notebooks, until form called out to me. Form came to me through this materiality. It is a space of connection, in which I construct the iron folds through and for these lines and words.
In addition, I come from a region in the railway suburbs of Salvador. Iron is everywhere, from the railroad tracks that transport us to the work of the local laborers, who used to make beams for buildings and civil construction. Iron has always been a part of my life.
I am a sculptor who engages with materiality without placing demands on it regarding what it can be. Creating these works is an exercise in strength, time, and temperature. Besides, I don’t bend the iron alone. Bending a one-inch piece of iron is a collective effort, involving many hands, requiring rhythm and coordination.
The shadows cast by these materialities are like a multiplication of languages, they are words drawn in space. A shadow creates distortion, it creates abstraction. The shadow enters the work as an explosion of three-dimensionality, allowing us to step back from the object and understand how it projects itself as a living presence in space.
Traveling Exhibition
For this Bienal project, I thought about how these sculptures could be sufficiently free within the space, and not only from a material or aesthetic perspective, but also based on what I learned from the paxiúba, I thought they could walk and move on their own.
The installation has evolved into a cluster that makes sense both as a whole and in its separate parts. What is most important is the question: is it possible for us to grow aerial roots? To perceive the movement of aerial roots is to keep them in motion, and in this context, rethinking the installation achieves just that. These works were created to extend beyond the Bienal and reach other territories. As they circulate and are redesigned in more cities, the forest also reconfigures itself.