Efemérides series, 2023-

installation and video [color/sound, 12 hours]
cyanotype and screen printing on 48 fabrics
180 x 90 cm

Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro, 2023

At every change of season in 2023, I was present between 6am and 6pm on the slab of the galo coletivo, where I was able to create a small outdoor laboratory and stretched out, once an hour, a piece of fabric with a layer of cyanotype to be exposed to the sun. Each hour was separated into three 20 minute stages - application, exposure and development-. The cyanotype, a photosensitive solution known for its bluish hue, has the perfect sensitivity for this time interval and allowed the exposed object to have a varied intensity in relation to the power of the sun, resulting in a total of 48 fabrics with different blues.

While I was exposing the material to the sun, I observed from the slab the neighborhood waking up, people working and the day going down. This ritual was shared live on YouTube, resulting in 4 video performances of 12 hours each, called “hanging an equinox/solstice on the clothesline”. The performance took place before the work had a specific form. Taking shape over the course of the year, it finally became a kind of “daily calendar”: like a wall calendar, on the top page we see an image representing that moment (in this case represented by the different shades of blue) and on the bottom page its temporal reference (here separated by 12-hour intervals instead of 12 months). It’s worth noting that this is not an exercise with scientific pretensions, but rather a desire to record what was happening there, at that time and in that place, religiously respecting the presence of clouds and the various shadows that could affect the exposure of the fabric.

The work is the first in a series of records of these 4 ephemerides, an exercise I want to practice in places where I’m staying for, at least, one lap around the sun.

Hanging a equinox/solstice on the clothesline, 2023 [excerpt]