Andrometry Series

It began as a simple idea, borne out of a curiosity over the word woman, around 2010. Out of the fact that it contained "man" within it, as if a woman were a modified man. What was then the meaning of that "wo" particle? For a time, I toyed around with ideas of Freudian castration, imagining that "wo" could be a contraction of wounded. A simple search revealed that the word evolved from the old English word wimman, comprised of wif (wife) and mann (a non-gender-specific adult person), which was simplified over the years until it became woman. In any case, the structure was intriguing: a masculine word borne from within a feminine one.

I decided to carry out an experiment in my first studio at my grandmother's house, where years of pictures hung on the same places left lighter areas on walls that were gray with the city's soot. I cut out the letters in black adhesive and stuck them to one of the walls. My intent was that the soot would darken the white walls around the letters over time. After an unspecified while, I would remove the first couple of letters from the word ("wo"), leaving the ghostly pristine wall in their place and the presence of the remaining letters ("man") by their side. I never got to finish that experiment. Life intervened in the process, I left the studio alone for a while to pursue my teaching job and, by the time I came back, my grandmother had passed away and my parents hat moved into the house, requiring the studio that I hadn't used for quite some time.

In 2020, the country dealt with the COVID 19 pandemic. In the headlines, we saw the rise in domestic violence cases. To me, it all sounded like the result of brutish old-fashioned men who, cloistered in a domestic/female environment, found themselves unable to carry out their roles as providers in their workplace/male environment. They felt emasculated, feminized, as they were obligated to deal with their own households. They reacted by attacking what was feminine: at home, in their wives, in themselves. They needed to excise that which they felt was being tagged to them - femininity and care - and which they never new had always been there somehow. They needed the violence to reiterate an ideal of masculinity that had never been completely true.

In my own experience of the lockdown, I dealt with a new studio within the apartment I had purchased with Lexy, who would become my wife in the following years. I had just painted Iokanaan and felt frustrated. The painting had been a huge technical exercise that pleased no one but myself. A masturbatory act of artistry, a technical and conceptual excess with little impact that had gone on for months. I needed a palate cleanser. That and the headlines of domestic violence had me thinking once again of woman.

It would be a simple piece, stripped of all technical excess, keeping only that which was essential to my production: the recycled paper and solvent transfer. Minimalist, which was precisely what made it impactful.

The entire production process went on for a little under a week: papermaking, drying, printing and transference. In the end, I used the same solvent, which had created the letters, to dissolve the "wo". Dissolution didn't happen entirely, and it left an unfocused stain which still bore the shape of the letters.

The simplicity of the process was refreshing, and other iterations of the idea were produced in the following weeks. In "Female", I took advantage of the layered structure of my papermaking process to cut out the first layer onto which "Fe" had been transferred, leaving in their place a void in the shape of the letters, right beside the remaining "male". In "She", I used the gaps between the porcelain tiles of my studio to cancel out the "S" still in the papermaking stage, leaving "he". And in "Deusa" (Goddess), the first one in Portuguese, I used the light of the sun (the astral body usually associated with masculine strength and male deities) to burn out the final "A", leaving the remaining "Deus" (God). They were all acts of aggression. They all formed masculinity through self-mutilation, removing a part of themselves. They were masculine words because they were incomplete.

Woman Impact

March 2021

Solvent transfer on handcrafted paper

35 x 70 cm

Private collection

Female Times

March 2021

Solvent transfer on handcrafted paper

35 x 72 cm

She American

April 2021

Solvent transfer on handcrafted paper

35 x 73 cm

Deusa Arial

July 2021

Solvent transfer on handcrafted paper

37 x 73 cm

In July 2021, Woman Impact was sold to actress Clarice Abujamra in the final exhibit of Casa Tato 3. It was my first sale to someone who wasn't a family member or a close friend. A person who genuinely say the piece and decided to purchase it without the intention of helping out their artist friend.