DESTIERRE

Destierre (Banishearth) is a photography series and a painting that explores the relationship between earth and cement. The impulse behind the painting that gave rise to this body of photographs was to express the painful feeling of the earth being invaded by humanity’s civilizational needs through cement. This vision took shape after spending three months in the nearby jungle as a personal experiment — an experience that completely transformed my practice. I stopped painting with acrylics and photographing from a distance; instead, I began working directly with organic matter.

Yet, unexpectedly, it was not only a story of invasion. When a deep red color emerged from the mixture of turmeric and cement, I understood that nature and cement remain in dialogue — both still alive. It is a conversation between minerals and elements that stain, oxidize, and reveal a complex relationship, one that resists being reduced to black or white, perpetuator or victim.

To paint with minerals is to paint with the earth itself — with nature in the act of releasing its own reflection. It is to work with what was once stone, with raw matter shaped by our hands, drawn from mountains and fields. It is to paint with our ambitions, our needs, and the residue of our presence — with what moves through the body: what my feet step on, what my mouth consumes. Turmeric and cement — a post-selvatic dialogue.