Para investigar o mar precisei atravessar a pele: notas sobre moluscos, memória e ancestralidade

Abstract

I propose, based on small accumulations of texts, an investigation into memory, ancestry and ethnic-racial issues. The accumulations or notes are interspersed with personal accounts of my childhood, works of visual art and myths and stories about the sea and its creatures. Moved by the possibility that there is a sea inside me, I choose the molluscs, especially the octopuses, to guide me through the tangles of tentacles and hair that I find on the way. I compare our physiologies, origins, histories, skins. The constant restlessness in the skin of the octopus, visible in its intense movement, makes it able to change its appearance indefinitely. I think of all the cells that make up my skin, of miscegenation, of the consequences of the kidnapping and enslavement of African people coming to the Americas. To reach the inner waters, I had to go through many layers of skin marked by trauma, wounds and scarring. The octopus' camouflage and escape tricks lead me to think about creating strategies, situations and images through which we approach freedom.