STATEMENT

"Candomblé is a Brazilian religion created by enslaved people in response to the brutal process of colonization. Maintaining faith in an unknown land was not only a way to survive the horrors of slavery but also to transcend them. To me, therein lies the beauty of this mythological universe, which not only offers answers to questions that reason cannot answer (like almost every religion), but also promotes the reconstruction of identities, the preservation of culture, philosophy, and the worldview of an entire people torn apart during the forced diaspora.

In this series, I explore the Inkices (the gods and goddesses of the Candomblé Angola lineage) who take physical form through artistic representations carried out in sewing, painting, dance, and music workshops held since 2000 at Bankoma, wich is part of the 'terreiro' of Candomblé 'Joaozinho, filhos da Goméia' in the city of Lauro de Freitas, Bahia, Brazil. With the aim of poetically recording the spiritual entities ruling each year of the religious calendar of this 'terreiro', I used a mixed light technique, capturing both details and decomposing the portraits into subtle traces of light, a combination that gives the final result an ethereal and diaphanous atmosphere.

This research helps us understand that in the quest to answer questions for which we will never have answers, humanity surpasses itself, producing, through the hands of human beings themselves, divine things."