My sense of truthfulness derives from seeing and touching.
I believe this is due to the fact that after a lifetime of defining my practice through references in books and computer screens there is a part of me that is fed up being distanced from the world.

I might also trace it back, as being part of a generation born several years after the end of Brazilian and Uruguayan dictatorships where there were a lot of unconscious responsibilities inherited from what in other time would have been a new beginning. Like a tabula rasa the news media might call us “the sons of democracy” (what a joke).

As a desperate way to envision hope while embedding a nationalistic responsibility into newborns. Nevertheless, coming from a politically engaged family at the time and emotionally and physically wounded by military oppression and its conser vative policies. The attitude I inherited was an unconscious reaction embodied in each of my body cells to firstly step back.

I used to have this old picture of my mother that now disappeared. In the image she was around 13 years old, so that meant it was in the late 60’s. She was dressed with white pants while jumping between old sync roofs in what it looked like a summer day. By the position of the camera and the smile on her face it looked like the photo caught her misbehaving by sneaking out from my grandma’s house to play with the structure that holds the roof boards altogether. Her name is Sonia. My grandfather and great grandfather, both convicted communist, decided to inspire into Russian names to choose my mother's and uncles' ones. Partially because of how their sound, and unconsciously to let them be the carriers of their political views. I could never blame them, at that time communism did sounded as a great idea, but sadly it did not aged well.

Until today nobody knows exactly who took the picture. While asking my mother she said she doesn't remember since my grandma's house used to host innumerous travelers, family members and friends of a friend every day. Later in life I learned that my grandma’s house was very well known in the country by hosting communist travelers. Partially by the devotion of my grandfather to the party, and partially to its localization, since the house was located meters away from the national borders that divide Uruguay and Brazil. As a result, during times of political turmoil, those who wanted to cross borders without identification attended to her house to rest and hide for a couple of days.

According to my grandmother who decided to stay out of the political universe of her husband, for a few decades unknown people just knocked on the door asking for her name, weirdly treating her respectfully and with beloved care. A few people told me that a brazilian outlaw president hid there, while my uncles always repeated they helped to cross important people that they will never speak their names. Nevertheless, the irruption of the right wing military dictatorships in South America between the 70's and late 80's, established more than twelve years of repression in a national trauma that lasts until today. Although most of its impacts are acknowledged until today, some of them are still invisible, especially those that cannot be sealed by language. Such as when the dictatorship came to an end, after the pivotal years of extreme political persecution, torture and death to left-wing sympathies. What history books described as a celebration of democracy what was perpetuated was a widespread numbness, and a bittersweet feeling of ideological defeat.

I can imagine this happened due the paradox between mission ac - complished and the impossibility to return to a prior state. As a re - sult, friends and family members -once communists union leaderssuppressed its revolutionary core to the extent of not pronouncing them - selves must of what happened for decades to come. Only until 2010, silence was broken when the government acknowledged their responsibility.

And national re - tributions started to arrive by mail to those who were once physically and mentally affected. In addition, in my family a general feeling of negation remained in discussing political sub - jects while old values stayed in a sort of ideological sincretism. Such is the feeling, that one is, not just nothing without a community, but also that one needs to remain partially insider and partially outsider in the systems we inhabit. I'm finding myself again in my mo - thers bed from last december. Her fragile hands try to comb my hair with a cat brush while she giggles how this thing can make a man's hair look so nice. In fact, the huge brush sof - tened my knotted hair enough until it covered my eyes. Rather than a non - sensical act, for me it was part of our unspoken lifelong bond that is to acknowledge that, at the end, all things pass. And in the mean - time the most important thing is to laugh at this pile of nonsensical events that constitute life. VIII:IX VIII:X VIII:XI 138 139 Nevertheless, In between of the several impacts, what interests me to comment here is the resilience that arises from those who are pushed to swim through trauma. Especially when it feels that every moment could potentially be one's last and will determine that there are emergencies and solutions, past, present, and “something" else. I do believe that being closer to the present has been the major propeller in the evolution of social subjects, such as gender and racial justice. When traditional values of "progress at any cost" are taken into consideration and questioned in the everyday basis. Since nowadays traditional notions of radical politics seem outdated or they acquire totalitarian tones in the political realm. Nevertheless, What remains is to activate the ideological structures we inhabit in order to rethink our links with the past and break out of oppressive territories while reconstructing the political imagination of the future. As a rebellious act against a punishing father, his daughters and sons broke out of the comfort of their house to dive into the unknown in order to be in sync with life.
For me to make is to be in sync with life. It is to step into the unknown in a hands-on process to decode one's interface with reality, while defining one's present in a constant state of decision making. It is through making I can navigate in the border between myself and the world. While bridging intuition with my ideological constructs. And as such from the back of my head while working intuitively and ignoring the original aim of tools and materials. I intend to explore such convictions that structure myself. In a revenge of the utilitarian nature of my own
constructions by using its use against themselves.

ABSTRACTION AND EMPIRICAL ILLUSTRATION

We live our lives made up of a great quantity of isolated instants. So as to be lost at the heart of a multitude of things. (From the Double Dream of Spring, 1970.)

1. Gavrilo Princip’s last grocery list written
   
2. The time that alligator ate that fish
   
3. When the Yongzheng Emperor found that weird dust bunny under his throne
   
4. The great earthquake of Alexandria