Diary

Clay became a page.

As a writer, I have learned that writing begins long before it finds a home on paper. It rests and goes through mutations before it comes into existence. Many times, I have felt it living in my body, unable to let it out.

When I first began working with clay, I felt, almost instantly, that the act of making was also writing trying to materialize, as if it needed to find its way out somehow so that it would not suffocate me.

When I created Cicatrizes, in an attempt to transfigure physical and emotional marks, through an investigation of feeling, words were swallowed by pain.

Now, in Diary, I begin to write from what remains, using clay as a way to give these words a body. I write in Portuguese, and when I think about literature within my practice, I cannot imagine it any other way. The emotional origin of each word needs to be preserved. It is the language of my inner self. Mother-tongue.

Words need to exist, this is my truth.