“During the Pandemic, artistic creativity was my great escape. Through new practices and materials, I have developed several works that emerged from the vital need for expression. It was crucial for me to keep expressing myself creatively and to further develop my technique.”

“ Right after the first wave of the pandemic, I woke up at 4:30am to take some photos at Arpoador Beach, Rio de Janeiro. While I was photographing, a couple young guy came up to me and asked if I could take pictures of them. This unexpected series of photographs took form and they instill freedom, happiness and remind us of the risk of being alive.”

“In the series Skins, the support is the paint and the subject is time itself and its remnants. My actions and gestures of spreading thick layers of paint on my studio’s walls with accumulated lines, stapling canvas, and dripping paint are apprehended on that surface. I can then peel off the paint and the history it holds and refresh my walls. The removed Skins are a record of my studio’s space, able to live elsewhere and off the wall where I created many paintings.”

“In Dialogue with Marta Araújo is a collaborative series of photographs that started from a conversation about the female body, displacement, memories, space, shifts in society, and the pandemic.
This is a collaborative project with Julia Brandão and Suzie Rzecznik, two of the most talented artists I have had the pleasure to work with.”

“These two photographs express the idea of being secluded into one space, one book, one friend, one bench. Despite the constraints, it shows that our joy and plenitude were still there to remind us how good humans are at evolving, adapting and thriving in adversity. Street photography gives you the chance to transform an apparently trivial daily life moment into a meaningful narrative.”

“When the pandemic hit, I started making heart-like organ figures as part of a daily grieving and healing ritual (many of them sent to loved ones in Brazil).

“NÓS SOMOS UM CORAÇÃO SÓ, UMA TERRA SÓ,
UMA ALMA SÓ”, - Davi Kopenawa
“WE ALL BREATHE OF THE SAME BREATH”, - Rina Swentzell

This ancestral knowledge from two indigenous elders, one from Brazil and the other from the U.S., were threads of hope I held onto in this challenging moment. ”

“When the pandemic hit, I was already in Mars, which is the name of the seasonal art community/ R&D lab located in the Sonoran desert, Arizona. While generating collaborative knowledge on Mars with a group of creatives, I collected local clay and made ceramics with primitive kilns dug into the ground. My creations are colorful, genderless, only head and no body creatures; a version of ourselves who see no difference between the physical world and its virtual simulation. Humans that mutated to adapt to a changing environment: Martians!

Not so different from us, these future humans like to spend their time telling stories, imagining the past and the future. I plan to tell their stories and invite people to join me in such a task. Little Martians is a 2021 tale inspired by the classic The Little Green Man.”

“The pandemic brought me back to a recently completed project on women of the Diaspora and their efforts to build a new biographical narrative in a foreign country. As my art tools became an anchor in a threatening sea of uncertainty, In light of that idea, I went back to those twenty-two women and the letters written to them. The images on view were created while I re-imagined their crafts, working tools, and spaces beyond materiality. I asked myself what their emotional meaning was as they were learning how to cope with change.”

“Geometric Rainbow and Amoebas are glass wall installations that crave sunlight and transform the immediate environment and the viewer with unexpected transparent colors. These two pieces evolved from works that I presented during the pandemic at the Queens Botanical Gardens, as part of an AnkhLave Arts Alliance Fellowship. My interactive installations provided sanctuary and immersion, while taking art ideas outdoors.”