Berço Esplêndido
Oil on canvas
45,5 x 60 cm

A toucan balances on a paper boat, its foot caught in the cord that bindsits skeleton to the same vessel. Around the skeleton hangs a tag reading Estrangeiro (“foreigner”). Between them, a gloriosa lily rises like an oar.

The paper boat recalls the journeys that have carried people across the oceans for generations Japanese and Italians to Latin America. But what interests me is not the crossing itself. It is the label. How easily a single word can follow someone across oceans, becoming more permanent than the body it was attached to.

I have carried different names in different countries and communities. Some were affectionate, some dismissive, some impossible to escape. we cross borders, hoping to leave them behind, yet the labels often arrive before we do.