Bone Foam

'Bone Foam' brings together work produced over more than a decade in the rural areas of Alto Minho, northern Portugal, where my family has always lived and where I grew up.

Drawing on my personal history, the project explores subsistence farming in the region and the central role of women within it.

Most of the photographs feature my mother or myself in the house where I grew up, which now serves as a storehouse for the food she produces for our family. This house-storehouse has also become my studio for much of the work.

Agriculture in Alto Minho is deeply rooted in family-based subsistence farming, which occupies around 34% of the region's land. Historically, it has been sustained through the labour and stewardship of women. Often described as the region's "matriarchs," they combine agricultural production with domestic responsibilities, ensuring the continuity of both the land and its food systems—where feeding becomes an act of care.

Within this way of life, so deeply connected to nature and its cycles, there is a pagan and earthly dimension that permeates everything and cannot be ignored.

The earth is touched by the whole body.

By invoking my ancestry—familial, physical, spiritual—the place from which we begin, I come to understand that the cycles draw closer and flow naturally.

Movement through these cycles can be magical and mysterious.

The feminine presence is constant and intense. Women generate, create, kill, and nourish.

The bodies of things and of people are not forgotten. They find a place to rest and remain there, suspended in time.

Between connection and encounter, I recognise that we are part of a larger order, where both what we know and what we do not know coexist. It seems to me that we are not exceptional. Everything that exists is apart from us and a part of us.