While in residency at Largo das Artes in Rio de Janeiro, funded by the Regional Arts and Culture Council, I investigated corporeal decay, fire, and power, stemming fro research into global warming and ever-more-extreme means of extracting oil. I drew from a range of influences in Brazil- from the artists Leonilson and Arthur Bispo do Rosário to the popular and public poetry practices of “literatura de cordel” in the northeast of Brazil as well as “pixação”, the poetry painted on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. I wrote about this for the Poetry Project Newsletter.
I exhibited this work at Largo das Artes in October and November 2015, at the Cascade Art Gallery at Portland Community College in January and February 2016, and then Portland State University’s White Gallery in April 2017. I am now expanding the manuscripts to a set of 12.