Color does not care for time

I think it was handling a small sample of hematite that made me think about going back in time. A time that, beneath my feet, has leaped across decades, centuries, and millennia. Both real and unreal, time has always been one of my most intense anxieties. I am referring to human or historical time, because geological time is something I can hardly begin to think about.

Determined to learn a little about the history of each color, I began visiting archaeological sites. Not with the knowledge of a scientist, which I do not profess to be, but claiming the artistic license of someone who works with the same materials used in those cave paintings.

The art of our ancestors remains in sheltered places, such as in caves deep within the earth, naturally protected from new populations. Or even in open areas, as in the case of the Painted Rock of Umari, in the municipality of Bananeiras, Paraíba, where I was born. We do not know the exact date of the Umari paintings. However, we know that the blood-red hue of the geometric designs and handprints on the stone atop the granite formation has been defying the forces of nature and human understanding for millennia. As enduring as the red of hematite or as fleeting as indigo blue, color is unconcerned with the passage of time, which is, after all, a human anxiety.

The Word Earth

At first, I sought out materials, colors, and textures in the field to prepare pigments and paints—and to cover, with still-timid brushstrokes, small canvases, papers, and cardstock. My constant immersion in natural landscapes, the development of my areas of research, and the fields of knowledge into which I ventured filled me with both fascination and fear. However, the challenge of leaping into the abyss has always attracted me far more. In the book I wrote, As Cores da Terra [The Colors of the Earth], I speak of this vast land with which I coexist:

“In the Portuguese language, the word terra can refer to the planet in the solar system where we live, arable land (the basis of our survival), any region, ‘a land…’, a plot of land, the homeland, as well as one’s place of birth, ‘my land…’, dust, powder, clay, mud, the world. While this breadth of meanings influenced my choice, there is also the intimacy that comes from my long-standing use of paints that have historically been named after the places of origin of their pigments, combined with the word ‘terra’, such as Sienna earth, Umbrian earth, Neapolitan earth, Veronese earth, or with specific colors like purple earth or green earth. In addition to these factors, this choice also reflects my ideology and my political and environmental commitment.”

The earthy body, so undeniably material, so easy to analyze, sift, wash, name, and collect, has almost subliminally also become art and poetry. When mixed together, earth, even in its purest form, contained in a small jar, can thus be art, history, geography, geology, poetry, and why not, politics.

Truth be told, I didn’t choose to work with earth. I hardly noticed when it began to take up more and more space in my studio and in my work. At first, I kept all the samples separate from the art production room. Little by little, they took over the studio and mingled with tests, canvases, paintings, display cases, sieves, and sculptures. My fieldwork also expanded, and I came to understand that a small amount of earth or a fragment of the landscape could be a work of art. Living art.

In addition to the words related to my work methodology, many others were repeated so often that they also became part of my vocabulary. Among them: formation, barrier, colluvium, cut, cliff, and crag. Names of geographical features, but mainly of paths I’ve walked. On the crags, I collected the most beautiful colors, touched the softest earth, and smelled the scent of life, which after all, according to geologists, is alive. Slopes subject to a continuous process of change, gains, losses, and transformations. Just like all of us.

Museum of Brazilian Earths

I can’t estimate the number of samples in my collection. That’s partly because, for some time now, I’ve been storing some of them in other locations. But I can say there are thousands of earth samples from all regions of the country, labeled and stored, either in their natural state or processed into pigment.

From some places, I’ve kept piles of small clumps of clay, sometimes stored in small containers. From others, pieces of compacted clay are displayed like sculptures. Some shelves hold long rows of larger jars, completely filled with fine clay in various colors.

In addition to the clays, my studio houses a collection of minerals that tell the story of colors, a collection of natural resins and adhesives, and a collection of vegetable oils, which serve as binders for preparing earth pigments. Tucked among the shelves of earth pigments are samples, test pieces, small paintings, color charts, and maps.

A long time ago, looking at the sheer volume of materials and the way they were presented, I realized that, in addition to being an artist and a researcher, I had become a collector. And the collection I had put together looked more like a museum. I quickly grabbed a strip of fabric and wrote on it with red earth pigment: Museum of Brazilian Earth.

Living Earth

Although everything in my studio is harmoniously interwoven, and I have long understood that materials and works are parts of a single whole, I have always presented finished works at exhibitions.

In 2022, for a project by the curator Tereza de Arruda, I was able to present the other side of my work: the materials and secrets of alchemical practices displayed on a long table that resembled a laboratory bench. From that point on, the desire to create a synthesis-work took root in my mind. To have the poetry of the earth and the earth of poetry. Two years later, in an exhibition by the same curator, I ventured a first attempt at this project. My work Terra-devir [Earth-becoming], a sculpture made of fabric strips painted with pigments sourced from Brazilian soils, was accompanied by a small display.

In 2025, the honorable invitation from curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and the other co-curators of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo presented me with the opportunity to finally fulfill this desire. The combination of Terra viva with a more representative selection from the Museum of Brazilian Earth results in a work that is perhaps more complex, but one that I see as more comprehensive. It is almost a test or trial of a new model of art in which two sides merge—art and technique are shown to be equal.

Traveling Exhibition

I love all lands [terras], but I love those of the Northeast even more. It is the land where Sérvulo Esmeraldo, born in Crato, created major works and developed special projects. In the 1990s, I took part in an exhibition he curated, in which my sculptures, made of fragile materials, were installed on a square in Fortaleza. I helped set them up and then stepped back to watch what would soon be transformed by the rain and the sun.

I felt no sadness. On the contrary, I understood that the work had fulfilled its destiny. I learned from Sérvulo that transience is also a form of permanence. Since then, I have never again looked at earth merely as matter. It has come to teach me, every day, that transformation is also a way of enduring.