Two acts: to remember, to heal. In the hands, earth. Planting in rite on the asphalt, it activates and resurges a root system on a large scale. A living and watery forest for screams and erasures to heal. Ponto final, ponto seguido, presented by the indigenous artist Uýra, thinks and activates resurgences of Life covered by colonial materialities and imaginaries. Lands, memories, waters and forests sleep under the asphalt. Participation among and with the audience.
Uýra is a hybrid entity, the intertwining of scientific knowledge from biology with ancestral indigenous wisdom. She calls plants by their popular names and in Latin, and thus evokes their medicinal properties, their tastes, their smells, their powers. The result is a complex and intricate understanding of the forest, a tangle of knowledge and quests. Uýra presents itself as “a tree that walks.” It was born in 2016, during the impeachment process of Dilma Rousseff, when the biologist decided to expand her academic research and seek ways to bring the debate on environmental conservation and indigenous and LGBT+ rights to communities in and around Manaus. In art and biology classes, or photographic performances, in makeup and camouflage, in texts and installations, what Uýra does is to speak from the forest and with it.