Digging the dark

The photographic series “Digging the dark” proposes the representation of the coastal landscapes of the “Discovery Coast” in the South of Bahia (Brazil), where Pedro Álvares Cabral arrived in the 16th century, when Brazil was invaded. The images were produced at night, bringing to light an alternative visuality over landscapes that are usually only seen and represented during sunny days. The pictures are made using the hybridism between photography and self-performance, straining the boundaries between two distinct processes. The artist do the actions in the scene and took the pictures by herself at the same time.

The Discovery Coast comprises the municipalities of Porto Seguro, Santa Cruz Cabrália and Belmonte. It is an important historical region in the south of Bahia marked by the intersection between local tourism and large-scale tourism.

It is worth saying that the land was not discovered in the unfolding of the colonial process, and that it was always occupied land, inhabited by native peoples. Today it is especially the land of Pataxó indigenous villages, but also of black communities, fishermen and riverside villages. Communities embedded in an influx of different ecosystems, which dialogue in conflict: the mangrove, the Preto River, the João de Tiba River, the Jequitinhonha basin, the stretches of Atlantic Forest.

The rage for “discovery” is reflected in the fierce appropriation of the tourism industry, with the region being the second hotel park in the state of Bahia, a place of real estate speculation that colonizes the power of nature in the tiny and tiny space of the subdivisions. Contrary to this occupational project of controlling space and cleaning the territory through anthropic action, I propose to rescue not the “paradisiacal” character of the seaside that is sold in pamphlets and advertisements of large subdivisions, but images that are brought by the encounter between the body and landscape. A symbiosis between the absence of light and the small points of light mediated by the artist's body, making society aware of the importance of preserving this environmental and cultural heritage, located in the south of Bahia.