of flesh and terra


four, maybe five years ago, i learned that, genetically, i belong to a place that is not the one i grew up in. i also learned that estefânia, a great-great-grandmother of whom there are no images or other life-establishing materials, was the tie to that place my genes partially belong to. having often struggled to feel connected to the spaces i lived in, i took these discoveries as an opportunity to seek belonging. of flesh and terra started, thus, as a way to think about the tensions between psychological and biological belonging. ultimately, it became a work about my very own search for belonging, during which i held conversations with myself, estefânia, and the terra(soil) i collected in the places she inhabited. these imagined dialogues resulted in and are part of two entities—the dead can dance too and anatomy of a memory.
the dead can dance too, a moving-image essay, borrows estefânia’s imagined voice to describe and think about my process of (re)search for belonging. it depicts two different phases: one in which i focused on terra as container of traces and memories, another in which i used my body as a means to connect with and look for. the impact of (the making of) images in memory creation and remembrance is also considered.
anatomy of a memory, a mixed-media installation, reconstructs some of the moments depicted in the dead can dance too. as i used my body to imagine belonging, i created a memory of having belonged. we often think back to a particular event as an integrated unit. however, our brain treats its components—what we see, feel, smell, and hear—as single elements. here, i deconstruct my memory of having belonged to rehearse and repeatedly activate that memory and thus make it solider. it is also a way to make belonging slightly more tangible, by recognizing how simple some of its ingredients can be. you are invited to reflect on your own memory of belonging, or, perhaps, to start constructing it using my own contraptions, right here, at this precise moment in time.


the dead can dance too




anatomy of a memory