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Rite II Entering Womanhood:

Red Blue Purple Noise

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The more you listen—it is extraordinary—a stone tells you about the creation of the Earth and its connection with the universe since the Earth is part of the universe’s trajectory. When this connection occurs you are no longer isolated because you become part of a telluric discourse that combines the solar system, the universe, and larger systems. Not an economic system, a system from another dimension. (Denise Milan)

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Red, Blue Noise, and Purple Noise are part of a sequence of performances made from 2012-2013 in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The series is presented in photography and video registered by Ricardo Becker, Tinko Czetwertynski, and Naor Elimelech. 

These three performances are the beginning of the meeting with the body using Art Performance as a space of investigation between in and out landscapes and experiencing how we may affect and be affected by them. The first (Red Noise) happened at Ricardo Becker’s installation, Sopro, in Rio de Janeiro, following  Blue Noise at Espelho Seu.  At the time, Becker was taking the position of a mentor, witnessing my processes at Parque Lage Art School. Through his invitation, I came to interact in two of his installations, both made with wood sticks, bentwood, and other elements such as glass and mirrors, white powder, and electric fans.  In this extremely shaped environment by Becker's hands and mind, I responded to the surroundings and to his presence, with my body veiled in color wearing a Burka. I was contemplating what was like to move and to relate not being seen as my body with the usual facial and body expression we use to interact. I could look to someone, without being noticed,  I could laugh, or cry in privacy. I could see what others were responding to the veiled presence.  I was dwelling in deep reflections of what means to be a woman in the world,  invited to dress in the ethereal fields of fabric and colors, without an apparent body silhouette,  losing for a moment a usual sense of identity or identification. Those were the central themes explored in multiple performance interventions with the Burka with a codename Stone Woman.  Emotions such as shame and a sense of rootlessness were central issues at the time. Under the layers, a dissonant body seeking a universal resonance.

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In 2012, Ryan and I decided to spend some time in Sao Paulo with no apparent purpose. At the time I was introduced by my friend Osvaldo, to the Brazilian artist Denise Milan. She was presented to some of Stone Woman videos from where I received an invitation to create a piece in her studio inspired by an Amethyst gemstone. 

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What is an Amethyst above obvious apparent beauty and shine?  what is veiled under the dark, silent, and enclosed space where a crystal formation appears? those were questions engaged in my meeting with the art of Denise. 

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At the Milan studio, on Avenida Paulista, in August of the same year, the presentation took place for some guests including the improvisation of Caito Marcondes, a brilliant composer who played percussive instruments tuned in multiple spheres, joining a rhythmic conversation between sound and movement. Denise was very welcoming offering space, presence, and presenting one of her poetry that she wrote for Ópera das Pedras. For fifty minutes, we presented the cycle of birth and death of Venus in the Noosphere. Noosphere is a philosophical concept developed and popularized by biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, and the French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin defined as the new state of the biosphere and a planetary "sphere of reason" that represents the highest stage of biospheric development. The birth of wisdom, Sophia or light manifested in matter, the consciousness of matter, reason personified by female insight and intuition on a plane of divine evolution.

Anamorphic Metamorphosis is one of the concepts that I explored in images of distorted projections, reproduced as echos disassociated from a nucleus or root cause. Mimesis multiplying the reverse and external side of a shape, an optical illusion. On the walls, projected different portraits of Venus from the 15th and 16th centuries, drawings by François Debret taken on his travels in Brazil in the 18th century, and photos by American popstars from the 20th century. The climax happened when I found a small suitcase with souvenirs and objects reminiscences; a black stone, a children's book, small scissors, oil, brushes, and cosmetics. Unfolding in a sequence of actions where I use the items, improvising by an intuitive action accessing the body's memory, a metamorphosis reflected by the external environment, and mirroring the shape of Amethyst, the source. With the scissors, I cut layers covering my face, and the same scissors creating the dust of the black stone and mixing it with the oil, brushstrokes took on new sinuous shapes on the face of Venus still moved by intuitive insight, in the process of remembering, copying and deconstruct the original form of origin. At the end of the cycle, the challenge of the return; roll like a stone without being driven by gravity, finding the driving force to move with central coordination towards the path of the crystals from which I gazed, static, one of Denise's portraits, a golden portrait of Eldorado illuminated by the twilight of the sunset.

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