Artist book
Serigraphy on Conqueror Bamboo 250 g paper
Dimension of each open picture: 27.5 x 13.7 inches

(70 x 53cm)
Dimension of the box: 15.7 x 15.7 inches
(40 x 40 x 10cm)
Printing: 01/32 + 2 artist’s proof + 1 Handling test

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Video presentation of the book 

VIDEO LINK

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THE CHALLENGE OF LIVING IN 2020 MADE ME EXPRESS MYSELF IN THIS ARTIST BOOK.

In many moments of my life I had to be my own cornerstone; still in childhood I went through dramatic losses and received little family support to deal with them. This book reports losses suffered due to the coronavirus, but also reports life, like the image of the obstetrician who assisted a birth wearing the mask with the Latin America map which I had sent her by mail. And it wouldn’t be possible to talk about life without talking about death in any way.

The standstill imposed in that moment brought me great anguish, and I asked myself many times what to do during that period; I then decided to make this book, to make lemons into lemonade, and to portray by my point of view this huge world tragedy.

Tarot elements were an inspiration source during isolation; I remembered that, at ten years old, I received from my father a book telling the story of tarot in the world and the meaning of each card. I researched the feminine symbology of the major arcana, such as Justice, Strength and The World and the women gathered in my book mirror the meaning of each card.

The World is the card with which I identify myself. I watch myself in the middle of the ouroboros symbol, the mythical serpent biting its own tail, having to remake myself over and over, going through the karmic laws to which we are all subject to. Presenting myself naked in front of the world, resisting with art in this divinized form of a tarot card and having to start a new life cycle after overcoming all these challenges imposed by human existence.

The pages in this artist book carry hidden images, in which I make use of a special ink, only visible in a completely dark environment and activated by a flashlight – a relationship with this virus, which is present, but isn’t noticed by the human eye. This invisibility is also related to social differences, heightened during the pandemic: statistically there was a bigger death toll in the black and periphery populations when compared to the white population living in the capitals and with a higher income. Contamination in the indigenous population was highly underreported and we can’t really know the dimension of the exact numbers of losses in this segment. Added to that, they suffered, during their isolation, invasion and forest devastation in their territory, breaking previous years’ records. That is, the pandemic stopped the world but it didn’t stop the destruction caused by illegal prospectors, which were encouraged by the Federal Government’s public policies of flexibilization.

The book has reports of people who have gone through this difficult pandemic time. One of them is a doctor of the public health system, that, when infected with the coronavirus, suffered alone and in silence at his own home, a few blocks from mine, not receiving any visitors, to avoid infecting anyone who got too close.

The images of graves in Manaus, one of the cities most affected in Brazil, was one of the memorable moments of 2020. The ubiquitous virus that only becomes visible by human loss separates, more than ever, north and south by social difference, exposing in Latin American countries the growth of unemployment and misery.

During the pandemic time, I reached some vulnerable women groups and was able, by my work, to follow their ways of going through this hard moment in Brazil. The exchange began with the shipping of letters to which I enclosed masks with the Latin America map printed in

blood red, asking the women to send me a photo wearing those masks. Some of those women were invited to make personal reports to the artist book that I’ll be releasing still in 2021. The goal in publishing these reports and photos is to give visibility to the suffering caused by this virus that, being invisible to the human eye, makes us behave as if it doesn’t exist.

In Brazil, highly aggravated by social matters, the virus has spread and this has resonated beyond borders. The out-of-control pandemic made every country in the world to close its borders to us, and I had the feeling of living in Foucault’s panopticon, but “it wasn’t necessary to raise walls, the walls in 2020 became the human body itself”.

Women, in every war situation or worsening of social inequality, are always the ones to suffer more. From them I received reports of home invasion, attempted rape, theft, and so on... but always accompanied by a request of secrecy, because we feel ashamed, even though we know we are victims. A report in particular caught my attention and made me, from the moment I read it, a stronger person. One of those women confided to me that, for years she had tried to get pregnant and had finally given birth to a girl, who became the light

and meaning of her life. That girl, however, was victim of a gunshot by a police officer in the Rio de Janeiro community where they lived. Then, this only daughter, planned and loved, died in her arms, leaving a huge hole in this mother’s life. During the pandemic, this woman managed to go back to the house where they had lived together, planning to rebuild her life, working and taking care of the house that she had left behind after her daughter’s death. A symbol of strength for me and many women who had to give up important things, going through trauma and hardship, having to rebuild their lives; I then thought of dedicating this book to these and all women who have conquered their personal challenges.

Having in mind all these happenings of 2020, and out of respect to all victims of Covid-19, I create this book as a symbolic demarcation of the moment.

In its last page, a poem by an indigenous woman called Aline Pachamama about reflecting inside herself and being able as a heroin to reframe the challenges that we go through, driven by the strength and the will that unite us to overcome this moment!