Personal Work

In 2015 I decided to move my studio from bushwick to a little cabin in the woods.

I couldn’t stand bushwick anymore, and I needed to be alone to be able to create my own work.

Also needed sometime away from the city.

I am originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil. The biggest city in Brazil.

I grew up without any contact with nature, so everything was new to me.

The cabin is in a forest and is full of wild life.

I would go for hikes and I start collecting things I found in the woods, anything from bones to dead animals and tree barks and moss.

After experiment in my studio I thought it would be really cool to get some wild life cameras and spread it around the property.

I ended up with amazing images of animals I didn’t even know were there.

I got cute images of deers and coyotes, but that did not feel like I was putting enough effort into the project. So Started adding sensor motion lights to make it more interesting.

Still I felt I wasn’t really doing anything special or relevant.

When you live upstate, you end up seeing a lot of road kill, super sad. Since I have an obsession with death I decided to collect the road kill and set up a still life in the woods and see what kind of interaction I was gonna get.

By the way, picking up the road kill was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I don’t recommend.

I was curious to see the live animals interacting with the dead animals.

So I placed I camera and left there for 10 days.

10 Days later I go back and the table was empty.

What I found was way more disturbing than I expected.

A live Raccoon had sex with the dead raccoon.

That made me depressed, I couldn’t believe it. I felt super shitty for placing the dead raccoon it the woods.

After doing some research I found out that Necrophilia is super normal between animals. They don’t have morals like we do.

I felt I was a creepy and an asshole for doing this.

I still can’t explain why the raccoon having sex with a dead raccoon had this intense effect on me and how disturbed I was just thinking about it.

Most people don’t understand what I am doing and they think I am a weirdo.

I still want to explore more. Now I am taking a break cause doing it puts me on a depressed state.