Escada de Macaco

Araiké Da Silva

Painting - Vulcanic stone on cottonbag

100 x 70 cm

"Escada de Macaco" (the monkey ladder) is a painting made on a cotton bag using volcanic stone pigments recovered from the execution of the head depicting Deucalion, son of Prometheus. Fire is a creator and destroyer element. There are ecosystems in Brazil that depend on fire to regenerate. Plants that need to burn in order to flourish. Since there was a dictatorship in the 1970s a Zero Fire Policy came into effect, so fires were banned altogether. This has resulted in plants belonging to the "Cerrado" ecosystems which are fire-dependent, instead of regularly burn they have accumulated, creating a lot of fuel, causing devastating fires. As a result of climate change, ecosystems that are instead fire-sensitive, such as the Ammazzonica Forest, have become even more vulnerable given the drought and are thus being attacked by the Cerrado, coexisting in a kind of disequilibrium. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)