Maria Thereza Alves

 
Land
Recipes for Survival
Communal
Destabilizers
Birds
Seeing you
Water
Utopia
We
Borders
Plants
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Conselho de Seres / The Council of Beings

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Conselho de Seres / The Council of Beings, 2023

Installation with watercolors and objects

Participating in our voting system is an acknowledgement that we agree that we are active agents in deciding how our society – our lives will be. The process has been a long and slow struggle for inclusion of all human members of society beyond elite men.

But climate change reveals that this voting process such as it is and has developed in many parts of the world exposes a prioritization of humans and a disconcerting lack of concern and stewardship of the land and more than human beings.

Alves proposes the Conselho de Seres do Bairro / The Council of Beings.

The work introduces a very situated council which would comprise all inhabitants of a local neighbourhood including the more than humans. Through the installation our sense of community could be enlarged and opened up to a parallel society which inhabits with us a specific territory and reminding us that these beings have the same rights as us to be considered in social decision making.

The installation includes watercolors of hills (specifically of São Paulo) denuded of the Atlantic Forest. The process of deforestation produces beings whose daily relational complexities with an outstanding number of other beings has been minimalized, severed or destroyed. Removing the possibilities of ecosystems to function and maintain life.

There are watercolors of terrestrial crustaceans, insects, amphibians, and reptiles either local to Sao Paulo or who arrived seeking refuge and who are fundamental in creating a thriving more than human community. In the outdoor and indoor spaces of the gallery, Alves has installed possible shelters/refuges for an encouragement of a more profound, interdependent and inclusive possibility of community.

Poster & Text by Ana Teixeira for the The Councel of Beings at Galeria Jaqueline Martins

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