‘Only the body is capable of jumping over the difference while preserving it’
José Gil
Sete de Setembro. Looking at the map, which is a satellite photograph, we can see the rampant deforestation that surrounds this and so many other indigenous lands, in the Amazon as elsewhere on the planet. These indigenous populations keep the forest standing. And what keeps their spirits up? Multiplicity, Counterforce, Dual Citizenship, Junction of Opposites, Incandescence, Enchantment, Symbol: words that are now almost mantras, notions that have been pulsating through the processes undertaken by Vera Mantero and her guests since 2021, from the piece The Fright is a Whole World, through A small composition exercise (2023) and more recently __ groundsky | (2024). These works create frictions between different categories, oscillations between different spheres, incandescences at the crossroads of different domains, and place us on the threshold of the unconscious, allowing us to almost enter the world of dreams. Abstract figures and symbols cross paths with common everyday actions, bodies transmute at the intersection with objects and the poetic word. It is in these intersections and counterforces that our capacity for change is rehearsed, the translation of a destructive energy into an energy of openness and stripping away, focal points that will continue to be worked on in ‘C.C. (Crematistics and Counterforce)’.