The river that flows below the river
2024, March
Free embroidery and watercolor on raw cotton cloth
42 x 59,4cm
“The river flowing below the river is the mystery of life.
The compass of the invisible in its fluidity.
There is no present, past or future: when the river runs inside me, I run.”
The work was inspired by the ancient Latin American tale La Llorona, onde o Río Abajo Río is a world-between-worlds, the source of mystery and creativity. Going down there strengthens the determination to fight for redemption. Textiles, for so long marginalized by the canons of art, carry an inescapable power. Embroidery, like a thread that crosses space and time, is a vehicle for connecting humans with the world. Reminiscent of a map, the piece seeks the thread that links the ancestral to the future. In essence, rescuing this connection is an act of healing, a response to the temporal vertigo of contemporaneity.
The cry of silence
2023, April
Installation of embroidery and watercolors on objets trouvés and authorial objects.
2 x 1,20m
“For me, words have always been more tangible than the objects of memory themselves. Words spoken verbally are emptied and transmuted. What is written is. I close my eyes and see words. I try to transform them into objects, thoughts, images... I can't translate them.
I've always found women's artistic expressions based on their personal experiences of patriarchal violence relevant and admirable, but I never imagined that I would be one of these artists. I decided to break my silence.”
With words and phrases embroidered on traditional and non-traditional supports - between objets trouvés and authorial objects, the work is based on the author's personal experiences as a woman in a patriarchal society. The narrative contextualizes - in a dialogic and artivist way - the traumatic events, using objects that were present in the episodes. The trauma is approached from a figurative point of view, without aiming for a literal translation of the events, but rather allowing the viewer to construct their own perception and meanings.
The work was inaugurated at the Wool Museum in Covilhã - Portugal, during the 5th edition of the Artistic Research Days of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Beira Interior, in May 2023.
Rescue: embroidery, time & image
2022, February
Free embroidery and watercolor on raw cotton cloth
24,5 x 31,5cm (x9)
Based on a triptych narrative, the work criticizes the temporality and isolation of modern-contemporary societies, proposing an ancestral rebirth through the human time that characterizes embroidery, as opposed to machine time. Each triptych symbolizes a phase in the process of internal redemption that occurs from self-knowledge, namely alienation, search and, as a final phase, liberation. The processes that resulted in the work were documented in real time through visual production, with the aim of conveying to the viewer the slowness of what is done by hand. The videos can be watched here.
The work was inaugurated during the 5th edition of the Artistic Research Days of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Beira Interior, in May 2022. After the first exhibition, the work was sent to the New Hand Lab gallery, also in Covilhã, where it remains as part of the collection.
The conception of the work derived from academic research on temporality, presented at the 5th edition of the Jornadas de Investigação em Artes (2023) at the University of Beira Interior (Portugal) and at the XX Enecult: encontro internacional de culturas (2024) at the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil). The article can be read here
