1. What aspects does this artwork integrate (formally, plastically, or conceptually)?

We cannot immediately understand things that are meant to be understood indefinitely. — Francis Ponge

The images are part of the same flux, the same time that traverses centuries, economic cycles, governments. It is a journey that does not stop, progressing through history perhaps towards destruction, maybe towards death. The archivist is not given to pause either, operating now as an objective lens, now as a collector: everywhere there are plans, clues, relevant information to be gathered. If a cinematic thought presides over everything, an imagination forged by cinema, a chain of events and scenes, joining film or tape, transposing audio tracks from one character to another, identifying recurring mannerisms here and there, even if separated by decades.

2. Where is it embedded? (what was the genesis of the making? - the milieu, the context).

The images are linked effortlessly. Like frames from a dispersed film, whose sequences open up and expand in space, they point to a kind of sympathetic magic applied indistinctly on manzuás (1), books, and postcards. Beneath them, the elements of a work in progress become the same imagetic matter, items gathered by an impossible archivist who, in a single lifetime, had collected the remains of Langsdorff (2) and Euclides (3), Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira (4) , Rondon (5), and the Villas-Bôas brothers (1), witnessing through them the occupation of a territory and its populations, into what is today Brazil. This work derives from the series Frente de Trabalho, exhibited at Galeria Jaqueline Martins, in 2018.

(1) Manzuás: a term used in Brazilian Portuguese to refer to a type of traditional fish trap

(2) Langsdorff: Baron Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff was a German-Russian naturalist and explorer known for leading scientific expeditions in Brazil in the early 19th century.

(3 )Euclides: Euclides da Cunha was a Brazilian writer, sociologist, and engineer best known for his book "Os Sertões" (Rebellion in the Backlands), which describes the War of Canudos.

(4) Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira: A Portuguese naturalist and explorer who conducted extensive scientific explorations in the Amazon region during the late 18th century.

(5) Rondon: Cândido Rondon was a Brazilian explorer, military officer, and advocate for indigenous rights, known for his extensive work in mapping the Amazon and Mato Grosso regions.

3. What Question or Action does it propose?

The images reappear in different paths, just as certain scenes repeat in different cities, in a rhizome of symptom-images that connect past and future. It is a rather broad sequence, filled with ghosts, also insistent and recurring. The Peacemaker, under whose horse the oppressed miserable follow, does not cease his call to war, while in temples and dens, false prophets repeat their chants of spoliation and wealth, and shots disturb once again the surface of the waters.

The images advance unrestricted, following progress that moves sometimes like a marching troop, sometimes like tractors. They testify to an impossible, perhaps insatiable hunger, but the testimonies and signs accumulate, mute, under the ruins, and we are left with little more than to observe their nauseating repetition and the smoke. Smoke, not mist: the suppression of the horizon is a studied gesture, a project, a desire for death or ambush, itself insistent. Before it, as before all destruction, there remain the stones, luminous indications that there were once people, faces, a community by the river. The stones—the stones, like photograms, scorched by the future, murmur their lesson; not of quietism, but of action: towards the future.

Ícaro Lira (Brazil, 1986) resides and works in Lisbon, Portugal. He studied at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro) and Sound Editing and Mixing at the Darcy Ribeiro Institute of Cinema (Rio de Janeiro), as well as Cinema and Video at Casa Amarela, Federal University of Ceará (CE). In recent years, he has been analyzing the implications and consequences of political acts in Brazilian history through documentary, archival, archaeological, and fictional work.

Among his recent solo exhibitions, noteworthy are "Leçons de la pierre" at Salle Principale, Paris, France (2019); "Frente de trabalho" at Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo, Brazil, (2018); and "Projeto popular" at the 18th Sesc Cariri Exhibition, Centro Cultural Banco do Nordeste Cariri, Ceará, Brazil (2019).