I come from Minas Gerais, Brazil, a state where the disappearance of mountains due to extractivism is a historical constant. The project Depois da Partida (After Departure) originates from previous works related to mountains, stones, and colonial soil. The works explore ways of symbolising contrasts between dimensions and erasures. Between natural time and human time, between construction and disposal. Here, magnitudes oppose and merge. Human time joins cosmic time through the extension of its mythology, its tales and reveries. The counting of geological time accelerates with the collapses of the Anthropocene. In several of my works, this dual perspective is central to understanding historical relationships and the constitution of collective memories and fictions.

The journey of Depois da Partida begins with my personal narrative, marked by the sensitive collapse of a long-standing romantic and artistic partnership, which coincides with the collapse of a large rock in the house I shared with my partner in the mountains of Minas Gerais, our shared research space. The fall is consolidated by the political collapse of my country that same year, a milestone of further erosion. Fleeing through other mountain ranges, paths open up to explore new fictions of body-geology.

At home, the stones are devoured. The blood-red ore is extracted, travelling new routes, different from those once travelled by gold. Lithium is extracted from the Earth’s body in new colonial proportions. In my new home, far from the colony, the stones mimic the movement of the sea. Forever, volcanoes explode, liquidate and fertilise the earth. A perpetual cycle of a non-linear history. In both lands, on Earth, the fear of the end manifests itself as social vertigo. In both lands, new perspectives on love. Reconstructions can only be mediated by affections.