Peabiru and the Sailor's Farewell,2023
Maria Vaz and Marlon de Paula
Peabiru and the Sailor’s Farewell is the outcome of the artistic residency Transient Stay, carried out by ADRO+. The work unfolds as a spiral of times coexisting within the same territory—where São João del-Rei is located—or, conversely, as spaces that come into being through the succession of times.
The narrative begins almost two billion years ago, alongside other temporalities that, from the short span of human life, appear ancient, but which, in the time of stones, occurred only yesterday. The slow formation of lichens and dendrites coexists with the creation of pre-colonial paintings; stories without precise temporal demarcation, shared across different places and peoples, coexist with historical events that acquire new narratives and become absorbed into the collective imagination.
More than a finished work, Peabiru and the Sailor’s Farewell is a process—more a discovery than a presentation. It is an invitation to encounter the magical and the fantastic elements revealed during this month-long residency.
Millions of years later, in front of the path that led to the hinterland, the sailor says goodbye to the sea.
Time, compressed into wave forms, traces of centuries of comings and goings of water over the earth, could only be truly perceived by the oldest beings. These saw small organic materials form very slowly on their own bodies and, in an instant, generations of a city learned to speak with the bells. They saw, in seconds, the formation of kilometric routes that joined two oceans. They supported pre-colonial drawings and heard the same stories being created and told in extremely separate points, as if shared in dreams.
They saw a sea transform into a hinterland and, yesterday, they said goodbye to the sailor.
