O mergulho de Naïa
 

O mergulho de Naïa, 2025

Glass, metal, plaster, ceramic, and fragrance from the female and male flowering phases of the vitória-régia.

Beco do Pinto - Museum of the City of São Paulo

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Created for the Beco do Pinto | Museum of the City of São Paulo, O mergulho de Naïá is an installation that investigates the symbolic, temporal, and sensorial universe of the vitória-régia, an Amazonian plant that inhabits the threshold between water and sky, light and darkness, feminine and masculine. Its flowering cycle, which unfolds over two nights, alternating color, gender, and scent, structures the work as a choreography of time, transformation, and presence.

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By occupying the architectural shifts of the space, the installation invites the public into a sensorial immersion among leaves, flowers, buds, shadows, and smells, evoking both the botanical ritual of pollination and the Tupi fable of Naïá, a young woman who plunges into the water while attempting to reach the moon’s reflection. Between myth, vegetal eroticism, and olfactory experience, the work proposes scent as a language through which to think about love, desire, finitude, and the coexistence of birth and loss.

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Curated by Ana Carolina Ralston.