Cibelle Arcanjo | Muvucas

Muvucas

Evocation, the series by the artist Cibelle Arcanjo, is about a swarm of seeds that become a forest. Muvuca, an indigenous technology for planting native species with fast, medium, and long growth, is carried out in view of the plurality of plants, interspecific associations, and the exercise of intermediate and mediation states. In the wisdom of muvuca, it is necessary to recognize the sharing of nutrients between different species, as well as the roles of the death and life cycles of medium and fast-growing plants in protecting the soil and stimulating long cycle plants.

Like the muvuca, the intermediate states and harmonic associations “between-beings” are present in Cibelle's production. In the works Sopro (Blow), Guardião (Guardian) and Roda, gira, círculo, volta (Wheel, spin, circle, round), the body is the connection with roots, leaves, living beings, entities, orishas, air, water, fire, stars, and planets. Such elements can be understood as “what is around” or “the environment”, but I prefer to call them, provoked by the images, as “what goes through” and is “inseparable from being”.

The cycles of life and death of plants, in collaboration, lead to the notion of death in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Death well lived can generate life, become creation. Epá Babá! In Criação (Creation), Cibelle sharpens her income by becoming a lacemaker. On the canvas, the lace merges with the architecture of the hills, the beads come to life and the image receives a celestial luminosity. On the other hand, in the works Dar corpos às nossas lágrimas, deixar fluir o nosso sangue (Give body to our tears, allow our blood to flow), and Colheita na Floresta (Harvesting in the forest), the artist refuses the obliteration of colonial ecocides, genocides and epistemicides. In Harvesting in the forest, the bullet disguised as a seed reminds us of the false promises of the development of agribusiness.

Against the grain of the mono cultures, the works Busca em sussurros (Searching in whispers), Sinergia (Sinergy) and Cruzeiro do Sul (Southern Cross), bring lessons of seeing in the dark and learning in silence and doubt. With the management of digital color saturation in paintings, Cibelle evokes the biological mechanism of adaptation of retinas to light. Thus, she invites us to sensitize our eyes; namely to confuse beads with seeds.

Joyce Delfim¹, 2021

¹ Researcher, curator and art educator. MA in Advanced Studies in Art History from the University of Salamanca and PhD student in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Bahia.