Abiniel João Nascimento: Jirau

Jirau is both a starting point and a destination: a veranda surrounding the house, a place where tasks unfold according to the rhythm of plants, from sowing to decay. By naming her first exhibition in São Paulo after this space, Abiniel João Nascimento seeks to balance the presence between these two worlds. Proposing to her audience a passage between these two modes, the artist presents her work using earth as form, while removing these same forms from their contexts of use to bring them into the realm of art.

In this way, the jirau turns the exhibition into a conceptual proposition. Oscillating between worlds becomes a way of perceiving the works and of allowing the audience to understand that the functioning of forms and their aesthetic quality are one and the same—different approaches to the same kind of knowledge. Here, ephemeral practices that follow the rhythms of each life are translated into objects that hold a sense of potential within their natural flow. It is the design of the holes prepared to let the future sprout; or the seedbeds, which hold within themselves the promise of growth. If the plant sprouts, the piece will be marked by it.

When we look closely at these works, they are not so different simply because they are now considered art. From the gallery, the farm may seem extraordinary; but from the jirau itself, that power converted into art is just another movement—almost like an enchantment.

On canvas, Abiniel starts with common plants—native and invasive species that she recognizes from her community, but which she comes to know more deeply through painting. She learns about these plants through her relationship with them; in conversations with elders whom she asks about their everyday uses; and also in Jurema, where she rediscovers their fundamentals. Thus, the palm tree comes to be understood as the dwelling place of an enchanted being; and the pinhão-bravo, which blooms on fences, also reveals itself to be a medicinal plant capable of treating snake bites.

Abiniel prepares the canvas with an intense golden yellow, which is then covered with a dense coat of brown and dark green. It is in this second layer that the silhouettes of the plants are carved out, allowing the golden background to return to the surface. The shape appears engraved as light that illuminates the design of the plant. The result is an almost ghostly effect in which the figure appears as an apparition from the ethereal plane.

The framing and attention to plant morphology are directly related to the botanical drawings produced by expeditionary artists in the 19th century—images associated with knowledge of natural resources and with the colonial project. But Abiniel’s painting reorients this practice by demarcating the contours of species as a way of relearning about them without, however, understanding them as natural resources. On the contrary, Abiniel seeks to reestablish the relationship with each plant based on an errant inventory that records their presence. For this reason, the geolocations that appear in the titles refer directly to the lives that sprouted in the interior of Pernambuco. There, form and existence coincide.

With her work, Abiniel regains possession of what was denied to her, or what she had to deny, reclaiming parts of her identity in the relationship between painting and plants. One example of this is the series of large canvases stamped with holes for different types of seeds—an ancestral agricultural technology that appears here as drawing, an effective pattern for sprouting life.

In her sculptures, Abiniel works with the relationships between materials to construct presence. Using iron and fiber, the artist evokes fluid existences between art and enchantment. Scale, weight, and balance are mobilized to create bodies that relate to those of the audience, demanding space and provoking sensations. These large figures, these beings, these sculptures are presences before which one might look—or even pray. They are the work of someone who trusts and follows the cycles of life, knowing that enchantment and the extraordinary are part of them.

Yuri Quevedo