Brazil: Diary of a journey in a tongue felt within

Story

In this body of work, I find myself going back to water, to my true nature. I have been inspired to create images which help me to connect deeper and receive the message that Mother Nature has for all of us. By opening our hearts we can all receive her message of love and forgiveness. She is here to support us in finding our path toward our truth. We are innocent and deserving of full joy and pleasure. We must see this truth in everyone in order to fully see it in ourselves.

I created the images in this project in February of 2019. A few months later, news broke out about the extensive fires in the Brazilian Amazon. In my desire to connect and somehow contribute to stopping the destruction I asked to receive a message. I put my hand down to write and as the last line was pouring out I was a bit surprised by what I was writing: “Your soul receives me in silence, lovingly, free.” The forest was consoling me. 

Brazil: Diary of a journey in a tongue felt within will be an exhibition of 27 photos and 24 poems, 23 of which were inspired by those images and a last poem inspired by the Amazon forest. The photos are mainly from a trip to Brazil in February of 2019. During the trip, I felt the desire to write poems in Portuguese about what I was seeing through my lens. But I don’t really speak Portuguese so, once I was back home in Brooklyn, I wrote the poems in Spanish, translated them into Portuguese, and had two people check my translation. The second person was a woman I met during my trip. She would speak to me in Portuguese and I would speak to her in Spanish but we understood each other perfectly. We shared so much that not speaking the same language didn’t really matter. Our communication was beyond words. And this is also what the title of this project makes reference to: listening to the wisdom that we carry in our bodies and trusting that we can all connect with it.

Postcards    

                                    10” x 6.6” Riso prints

                                    13" x 8.5" Riso prints

                                    16" x 10.6" Riso prints

                                             The zine

Historically, zines have served to proliferate unconventional subject matter that isn’t usually covered by more traditional publications, such as magazines. They are popularly used by artists to share their work and ideas. The zine for Brazil: Diary of a journey in a tongue felt within will include all of the 27 images and 24 poems inspired by a connection to the natural physical world that has supported me and continues to support me in my journey into the depths of our true nature.

Thank you very much for your support! I look forward to connecting with all of you. And I'd like to give a special mention to Lauren DeWitt, for her beautiful work designing and editing the main project video; Ricardo Luiggi, for taking me underwater with his composition for the video; and María Lorena Bello, for holding my hand while helping me put this project campaign together.

Risks and challenges

All my images are printed by professional laboratories. Among other things, this means that they are experts at what they do and have access to resources that I don't have. However, it also means that I don't have complete control of the process, but this shouldn't be a problem since I always choose competent and reliable providers based on the beauty of the work they produce.