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

This triptych of risograph prints speaks to an extension of affection towards what our human moment considers inert, inanimate, lifeless. If we have to bring things into our lexicon for there to be understanding, for there to be empathy... They are images of a certain depth and have the presence of the interplay of light and darkness that forms this earth's skin. I think that, if you allow yourself to linger on each image, there's a certain voice of a deep time, as if you can hear the dripping water inside the cave. Time behaves differently underground, it can be slowed down. It's in allowing oneself to see the invisible that empathy happens. Between the "inanimate" and life, the only frontier that exists is language.

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

This triptych arises from ongoing research into how we create language to deal with the earth and soil, as the underground world is vital to the physical structures of contemporary existence, as well as to our memories, myths, and metaphors. In my investigation, I try to go to different landscapes where there is an evident protagonism of the earth, of the rocky formation itself. It is from the desire - to smell, touch, hear and feel the temperature of a certain depth that prompted me to go to the cave and take the photographs that I later transformed into risograph prints. The risographs have an important factor because the inks used are based on soy oil or rice bran — which, in a way, brings elements from the soil, reinforcing the idea of being attentive and empathetic to our relationship with the soil.

3. What Question or Action does it propose?

It proposes a lingering in the image. It proposes an imagined listening, a tactile sensation of the texture of the cave's surface, and the smell of the damp cave, and the feeling of the stable temperature at a certain depth on the skin. Affection.

Natália Loyola ( Brazil, 1981) lives and works in Lisbon. Holding a journalism degree and a master's in anthropology from Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal), she is a multidisciplinary artist. Through her photographic practice and thinking, she approaches the geological world to establish a direct relationship between this field and the ways language is produced.

Highlights in her trajectory include the solo exhibition "pele da terra" at Coletivo Amarelo gallery (2024), selection Internacional Art Biennal of Cerveira (2024), and her participation in the group exhibitions "Signs Point Yes" at Coletivo Amarelo gallery (2023) and "Mutirão" at NowHere (2021).