When I am drawing in the streets and have no place to put my ink, the same hands that hold the paper become the palette. Slowly I began to see my hands no longer as dirty, but as a painting. The unfolding of another painting, which gives life and inspiration to another artistic expression: body painting.

I gradually began painting down more of my arms, legs, torso, and face. I feel that painting the body is joy, fun, and protection. Painting your body can take you to places you’ve never felt before, disfiguring and reconfiguring your own image, making me feel and also be other things besides Man. Inhuman even, often seen as a demon, beast, machine, ghost, warrior, or haunting. Paintings bring protection, strength. and truth. The mud of the Amazon River, spread across my body, disfigures my human image, making me feel and reconnecting me with the forest. The metallic paint makes me feel that I have heavy and robotic arms.

Instead of trying to portray a specific moment or feeling, I just feel, listen, and respect the call of my heart, when I feel like painting myself. I believe that, in this way, the painting I do today remains in a free creative territory without the need and concern to seek references from ancient peoples who painted themselves as indigenous, African, or Hindu. Because all this ancestry lives in us, but much of it has been lost (body paintings, above all, erased and superimposed on white men’s clothes).

Today, painting occupies a place of ritual in my life, real and beautiful armor, carrying symbols, forces, and ancestral invocations.

Gallery:

Forging armors during some artistic experiences around the world: Amazonia, Sao Paulo and Curitiba in Brazil and NYC in the USA.

Forging Armors in Bahia–Salvador, December 2020 during an artistic residency supported by Casa di Mare. Photos by: Engels Miranda

Dig by: Leo Xander Foo
New york / Manhattan 2021

Grandma’s house, Yago
Brasília – Brasil 2022

FORGING ARMOR x ELITE TROOP: An unforgettable experience during my artistic residency in Rio de Janeiro, little Africa, supported by @potenciativa.