Presented in: Espaço Cultural Sérgio Pôrto, Rio de Janeiro,1991; and Art in General Gallery, New York,1997.
Continuing on from the previous work (Untitled – P.I.), this one conceives an intermediate space firstly containing only water, where there would be a ‘temporal suspension’ eventually interrupted by the inexorable action of time.
The last day
During the period of the exhibition, issues related to time, memory, fragility, inevitability, as well as some more subjective concerns, particularly touched me. I was “visiting” the work almost every day, always with great anticipation about what changes had taken place while I wasn’t there.
Finally came the last day, when I had to dismantle the installation, interrupting the process to which I was already so attached.
It was a sunny Saturday morning and I was driving my car to the gallery through the streets of Santa Teresa, an old neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro. Suddenly, in the middle of the street, I saw a newborn baby goat, still with its umbilical cord…. I stopped the car and, for a moment, I couldn’t understand the situation….
That’s when I heard its mother on higher ground, clamouring for it. I picked up the still-wet little animal in my arms and carried it back to her in the middle of some bushes. I took a few steps back to watch them… she started to lick the calf and, as she did so, she turned her back to me: ….hanging from her body was the bag of amniotic fluid still half full of water… my eyes were also full of water… I understood something.
Photos: Vicente de Mello
