Entitled Guiança, the body of work presented in the exhibition Início, meio, início is born out of my fascination with the idea of being guided by stars. As a woman born and raised in today’s urban contexts, directions that differ from “take the second right” make me think about how to direct myself outside of paved streets.

It’s curious to think that humanity predates maps/GPS and that other intelligences can, are and have been forged to respond to different living conditions. It should be noted that my interest lies both in the literal sense of guidance and in the subjective level of making decisions about one’s inner universe.

In view of this curiosity, I have to say that the story of the African-American abolitionist Harriet Tubman, as well as my particular experience with astrology, were the main drivers for my interest.

It was through Octavia Butler’s books that I came into contact with the historical figure of Harriet Tubman. Known for having led hundreds of enslaved people from the south of the United States to the north, where they could live in freedom, Tubman is the kind of personality who carries around a mix of factual data plus fanciful/mystical information.

Born into slavery, she has always been in poor health. As an adult, a brutal blow to her head caused her to develop a severe neurological condition now known as hypersomnia – in short, an irrepressible sleepiness. Through uncontrolled sleep, Tubman began to plan her own escape in vivid dreams, based on the North Star. In this sense, it is essential to note that Harriet, an icon of the fight against slavery in the USA, was also a person with disabilities, a neuroatypical woman.

At first, my idea was to create a virtual reality dealing with the subject. However, as the residency developed, I realized that, within our exhibition, it was more interesting to present the ideas in other media, while the idea of virtual reality would be taken up again. Thus, the title Guiança refers both to virtual reality itself and to the series of paintings, sculptures and installations investigating stars, the sky, health, illness, altered states of consciousness and dreams.

When it comes to the visual aspects, the following are dear to this work: Japanese drawings from the maho shoujo (magical girl) sub-genre; sky maps and their pictorial representations throughout the centuries; the research into retinal persistence carried out by Belgian mathematician Joseph Plateau and his creation, the phenakistoscope.