SINCRÉTICAS (2026)

Installation pair and performative activation.

Duration: 30:00

Currently at the exhibit r e t u r n 

Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum until December 6, 2026.

The performative activation took place on 24.9.2026,

followed by an artist talk with Nanette Snoep, museum director and curator of the exhibit. 

Media: External installation (doorway to exhibit hall): Iansã/St. Barbara’s swords (Dracaena/Sansevieria Laurentii plants), sea salt, paper boats, textiles, personal syncretic items, gestures of healing.

Internal installation: Sea salt, Arruda plants (Ruta graveolens), Perpétua & Púrpura (Grophena globosa+Echinacea purpurea), offering bowl, presence of the artist, gestures of healing.

Sincréticas traverses the ocean to evoke the womb of Mother Africa across African diasporas. The Orixá Iansã, a female deity of atmospheric elements, is syncretized in the sword plants (exhibit entrance) that open up the entryway leading to the exhibition hall. On a mound of sea salt, Iansã rests her body as the plants also known as Dracaena (Sansevieria) trifasciata ‘Laurentii’ work tirelessly to cleanse the air—an actual benefit of the species.

Inside the exhibition space, I conducted a personal, silent ritual to activate the installation, within a mound of sea salt in memory of those taken by the Atlantic during the Middle Passage slave trade, for whom fresh air was scarce aboard the overcrowded ships. 

One installation site echoes the other through sensory emanations and gestures of healing.

Sincréticas is linked to my other installation

In Relation With… at the adjacent exhibit Die Zukunft ist Indigen at Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, both on view until December 2026.

Ancestor great-grandparents evoked and repaired to participate in decolonial activations in an ethnographic museum. Celebrando as ancestralidades Afro e Indígena do Brasil.