The project was a research-based collaboration approached as a dialogue with a group of participants. I focused on exploring my own experiences in relation to others living through similar journeys as Brazilian immigrants, identifying intersections to construct a collective narrative. The project examined the objects and emotional dimensions carried through each migration journey, drawing connections to culture, personal symbols, and religious syncretism. This process culminated in a solo exhibition in Cornwall.

Zine content:

Dialogues

Eight unique journeys. Nine if I Include mine.

As a shared lived experience, we have the same birthland, and when the time felt right, we chose a different landscape - with an ocean in between - to call it home.

We moved following a love story, a youth dream, and/or looking for a different perspective on life.

Before that, who thought about a wintery Christmas and no jumping waves on New Year’s Eve? But there is so much more being lived.

It is in contrast and in-between that we deeply reflect on belonging and about ourselves.

Two suitcases each. Can you imagine accommodating your whole life or your new imagined life in just two suitcases?

I sold forks and spoons. I brought my children’s drawings, a big smile, mandingas and patuás. You sold socks, a heavy book and a rocking chair. You brought a guitar, a Nossa Senhora Aparecida, an old picture of a sunny beach day and a generous warm hug. Actually, loads of them.

Five hundred and twenty-three years ago, they told us that outside is better. They pushed us to deconstruct our connection with nature, our passion for bathing in the rivers, and the ability to know when it is time to relax, to party or to work hard. They partially failed.

They brought us Africa, and despite being brutal, full of red blood cells, we gained music, Iemanjá, Oxum, Oxalá.

They are civilised. We are not.

They are clever. We are not.

They are more. We are less.

We were told outside is better, and we still carry this embedded in our DNA.

But we are here because we want to be, leaving behind family and friends, established careers, a good life.

When the time felt right, we moved craving an adventure and looking for new possibilities, a bright shining path, turning lives upside down.

Mince pie and mulled wine in December, so different from the coconut water of the tropics.

Brigadeiro is still pretty much in every birthday party, here or there.

We are a colourful bunch. Welcoming, easy to be around, loud, always moving our bodies, constantly recharged by the sun.

Here I forget who I am in the winter to meet myself again in the summer.

I feel saudades to speak my native language when I don’t need to think to be able to talk and everything flows. I feel saudades of my-brazilian-self.

But I am here now.

I am here because I want to be.

We are here because here is better.

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Mandingas and patuás - little things and rituals for protection.

Nossa Senhora Aparecida - Black Catholic Brazilian Patroness.

Iemanjá - mother of fertility, motherhood, fish and the river’s water. In symbioses with the African diaspora, she is also celebrated as a mother of the sea.

Oxum - an orixá (divine being represented by nature) associated with spirituality and materiality, beauty and sensitivity. Represented by an elegant African woman adorned with gold and sitting by a river.

Oxalá - an orixá (divine being represented by nature) presented as both young and old. It symbolises peace and white light.

Brigadeiro - a typical party sweet made with condensed milk, chocolate powder and butter.

Saudades - a word that only exists in Portuguese, describing a bittersweet nostalgia when one feels love, longing, desire and a small amount of melancholy. It describes a profound emotional state related to a place, time, a person or a thing.