Following the catastrophic 2018 fire that ravaged the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro’s (MNRJ) collection, the artist established partnerships with the MNRJ's rescue team and the Department of Chemistry at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure in Paris. This collaboration birthed "Materia Prima”, a project aiming to transform the museum's ashes into artwork. 

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In a collective effort to honor South American heritage through care and transformation, "Materia Prima" stands as a testament to cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Through using this very symbolic remnant of the disaster, the ashes, as primal matter, a performance, installations, digital images,  and photograms were produced. 

The project was exhibited in the 6b cultural center in Paris, in the group show En Otro Poder. Three derivations of the theme were then presented : Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, an installation engaging the ash material into an alchemical distillery; Ash, a series of SEM photographs; and Flavour of One's Flesh, a performance. The show was organized by the Sur Imaginaires association, a group that aims to build a decolonial network of support for immigrant artists living in Europe.

The project has been present in two conferences, in the Sorbonne Pantheon-1 and in the 6b Art Center, where I discussed the meanders of working around heritage, scientific precarity, political crisis, and the neo-colonial ties that linger within the social relations between artists from the global south and north.

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You can find more in-depth content about the different series integrating the project: Things We Left In The Fire, Flavour Of One's Flesh, Greyscale, in  their specific slots in the website's menu.