Petrópolis 1951

Wrap then your anguish in cobwebs

and throw it into the well

This story begins on April 23rd, when I read these verses for the first time.

They came from a book written by Carmen L. Olivera, which told a love story between a poetess named Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares, a self-taught Brazilian architect. Ink, metal and nature mingled in Samambaia, where Lota had built her home.

With Bishop's poems under my arm, I decided to travel to Rio de Janeiro. I was looking for that cultural effervescence in that city of the 50's and to feel a frontal shock with that love so lush in words and surroundings.

It didn't take me long to embark on a second journey: the internal journey of the collection. The one that vibrates and hurts. The one that translates into colors and textures. The one that gives us sounds and beats that do not understand days and hours, nor countries or borders.

That is why in Lo de Manuela we have decided to reproduce that jungle in a mural to take it to any corner of our life and we have turned the song of parrots and macaws, their soundtrack, into our common thread. Black on white in honor of those letters on paper, and soft colors on natural linen in honor of the nakedness of the skin and the soul in contact with the rich and wild nature. The colors on linen are also present, as awakenings of that culture that populated the house of Lota.

We invite you to embark on this journey, to that house, to that environment and to that time where, as Bishop has said it best:

where left is always right,

where the shadows are really the body,

where we spend sleepless nights,

where the sky is as flat as the sea

and where you love me.