Utopic Forest (with a Place in America)
From the series "Ibirapitanga,"
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Fernanda Froes' work displays a transversal gaze that moves from one realm of nature to
another in various series, in search of a key that will return the trace of the primordial
connection between living beings. In her extensive series inspired by the tree that gave its
name to Brazil ─Ibirapitanga or Pau-Brasil─ which was exploited until it approached
extinction, there is a delicate gesture of reinvention that extends its existence. In her Indigo
Landscapes, the blue regions on cotton paper, created with Indigofera tinctoria dyes from
Asia, Africa, and Central and South America, evoke the origins and currents of the
expansion of its usage, and its lucrative exploitation following the Conquest.
Froes transports the domains of the prodigious and varied botanical dyes into the realm of
artistic imagination, revealing their intersections with the history of the America—a land that
generated the very notion of utopia while being marked by multiple colonialist dystopias. In
her no less delicate insect pieces, Froes explores the architectures that these small creatures
employ in building their habitats as a way to invoke models of human cooperation in a time
that urgently requires the coming together of diverse groups within the same species.

Adriana Herrera, PhD