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Tears, earth and chrysanthemum

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Tears, earth and chrysanthemum, 2022

Bed sheet embedded in the scent of mourning

13˚ Bienal do Mercosul

Suspended before the Guaíba River, a sheet infused with the scent of mourning sways in the wind. The delicate movement of the fabric releases the fragrance into the air, activating a silent, intimate, and collective sensory experience.

The work begins with the bed — a space of protection, dreams, and connection, but also of pain, solitude, and rupture — as a metaphor for the emotions deposited there. It is on the sheet that we rest, weep, and unravel. It absorbs not only the body, but the traces of what is no longer present.

In recent years, we have experienced a shared mourning. For me, as for many, the loss was intensified by the impossibility of saying goodbye — the absence of ritual, the final touch, the last gaze.

Tears, Earth, and Chrysanthemum is an attempt to give form to that absence — a late farewell, carrying in its scent fragments of sorrow, memory, longing, and hope.

This work was a finalist in the Sadakichi Award for Experimental Work with Scent category at the 9th Art and Olfaction Awards.

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Images: Thiéle Elissa,
Anderson Astor e Marcelo Curia / Terramar Imagem e Conteúdo

Supported by: Givaudan 
Commissioned by: Bienal do Mercosul

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