April 2021: Art and words by Rubiane Maia
Procreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 45th edition of this scholarly discourse. Literature intersects with art to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA #artandmotherhood
For the last three years, I have been investigating the concept of memory and its resonances in our way of existing. More specifically, focusing on the philosophy of Time proposed by Henri Bergson, which affirms memory as duration. In other words, it deals in depth with the subjective time that implies the continuous relationship between our consciousness and the world. This means that our consciousness (which is also memory) is not linear, as it is constituted on the indivisibility of past and present. In Bergson’s words, ‘duration is the continuous progress of the past that gnaws the future and swells as it progresses’. In my opinion, this sentence precisely confirms the hypothesis that memory cannot be configured as a drawer where remembrances are saved, because as the past is preserved by itself as a virtuality that coexists with us, it accompanies us entirely: each one of us is the condensation of the history lived since birth – and even before it.
DISSOLUTIONS
our bodies inhabit landscapes
even on mainland,
we follow the speed of the fish
arms take the form of dorsal fins
legs, tails
we are submerged,
drunk with salt water, contradictions and algorithms
our scaly skin burns, stings
it is true that not all parts of the body fit together – –
becoming-creature, becoming-noise, becoming-mud
the ocean is full of mythologies
hybrid beings,
bird fishes, jellyfishes, hammerhead sharks
in the middle east,
mermaids are goddesses of the sea, of vegetation and rain – –
they smell of dew
in some places in Africa,
they are stormy forces that mobilize the energy of creation
Mameto – Dandá – Kianda – –
Dandalunda, mãe-d’água, Odoyá!
our bodies not only inhabit,
they breath the landscapes
turbulent waters,
urine – giant waves – undertow – –
my fins fold in different directions at the same time
unlike fish, i have lungs:
two spongy cones that I use to filter the air
yes, i breathe,
i, us, the fishes and some other creatures
we breathe, even against our desire
involuntary act,
first and last movement of the life
vortex between birth and death
a gentle breeze comes in through the nostril,
fills the chest,
activates the diaphragm,
moves your tongue,
vibrates
thus, the voice is born
from voice to song, from song to word, from word to scream
our bodies not only breathe,
they become landscapes
from each breath a mountain emerges,
hills – dunes – stones – –
presence
organs are territories,
complex systems, regions
they make mazes and borders
they form valleys, subtle surfaces, rivers and lakes
every mouth is an abyss,
an endless hole
rough skin, dry leaf
dark eyes, fissures
anus, tunnel
blood, current
sweat, combustion.
sneeze, storm
feet, roots
bones, architecture
breath, gust of warm wind
body-landscape
landscaped bodies
we inhale, suspend, count to five
we exhale, suspend, count to four
we inhale, suspend, count to three
silence
we count to two, expand
one
i am breathing as someone that turn the key,
shifting worlds to open and close the body
physical, mental, emotional,
rupture – interference – happening – –
action that operates in the invisible,
in a constant process of variation
difference
breathing is to metabolize,
dissolving all forms, segments, rules, institutions.
breathing is channeling,
an offer from you to you – sensitive laboratory – –
an unpredictable device
vivid dreams
sigh
* Photographs by Manuel Vason
More about Rubiane:
Rubiane Maia is a Brazilian visual artist based between Folkestone, UK and Vitoria, Brazil. She completed a degree in Visual Arts and a Master degree in Institutional Psychology at Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil. Her artwork is an hybrid practice across performance, video, installation and text, occasionally flirting with drawing and collage. She is attracted by states of synergy, encompassing the invisible relationships of affect and flux, and investigates the body in order to amplify the possibilities of perception beyond the habitual. By doing so, she is constantly re-elaborating her personal notion of existential territories (spatial, temporal, cognitive, social and political). More recently, she has been researching the concept of memory and its relationship with language and the phenomena of incorporation [embodiment], often making use of personal narratives as a device for action and resilience.
In 2014/15 she received a scholarship at the Atelier in Visual Arts of the Secretary of Culture of Espírito Santo, she launched the book ‘Self Portrait in Footnotes’ and participated in the exhibition ‘Modos de Usar’ at the Museu de Arte of Espírito Santo. In 2015, she took part at the workshop ‘Cleaning the House’ with Marina Abramovic and participated at the exhibition ‘Terra Comunal – Marina Abramovic + MAI’, at SESC Pompéia, São Paulo with the long durational performance ‘The Garden’ (2 months). In the same year, she produced her first short film ‘EVO’ that premiered at the 26th Festival Internacional de São Paulo and 22nd Festival de Cinema de Vitória. In 2016, she worked on the project titled ‘Preparation for Aerial Exercise, the Desert and the Mountain’ which required her to travel to high landscapes of Uyuni (Bolivia), Pico da Bandeira (Espírito Santo/Minas Gerais, BRA) and Monte Roraima (Roraima, BRA/Santa Helena de Uyarén, VEN). In the same year she completed her second short film titled ‘ÁDITO’. Since 2018 she has been working on the creation of a ‘Book-Performance’, a series of actions devised in response to specific autobiographical texts particularly influenced by personal experiences of racism and misogyny.
