Flowing Affections: Laryssa Machada’s Sensitive Geographies

by Rogério Felix

Wed 21 May, 2025

Though brief, a “snap” (or “estalo”, in Portuguese) always involves a relationship between sound, space and bodies. Estalo is the title chosen for the 14th Mercosul Biennial, which functions as “an invitation to inhabit the movement and the transformation from one state to another”, as described by its curators. With a line-up of 77 artists, the Biennial is held in 18 venues across the city of Porto Alegre. Laryssa Machada is one of the participants in “a snap that looks like an asterisk, all spread out”, at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rio Grande do Sul, where the artist presents the initial results of the project Antes de você me amar, ela já estava me amando (Before you loving me, she was already loving me; 2022-present), currently embodied through an artist’s book, and digital and analog photographs.

Born in Porto Alegre in 1993 and living between Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, Laryssa met up with me at the National Museum of Afro-Brazilian Culture (MUNCAB) in Salvador to talk about her work. We reflected on indigenous presence in art history, alliances with Black artists and the growing proliferation of exhibitions that seek to rethink the direction of the art system, revising the labels historically imposed on artists previously classified as creators of “naïve” or “folk” art.

Left: From the series Antes de você me amar, ela já estava me amando (2022-present). Analog photography, 2024. Right: Antes de você me amar, ela já estava me amando. Artist's book. Cometa impressos, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

Our discussion inevitably led to the complexity of Brazilian identity and the secular invisibility of practices and presences. We concluded that perhaps the biggest challenge lies in the language itself: to this day, we still lack the terms to account for the radical diversity of what Brazil has produced outside the margins of the canon. Following our meeting, we also had two long video calls, before and after the opening of the Biennial. We talked about affections, territorial disputes, plasticity and the reception of images that had not yet been exhibited, especially at an event after the 2024 floods.

Conceived in 2018, the photographs for the project were taken starting in 2022, in Baía de Todos os Santos (Bahia), Baía de São Marcos (Maranhão), Baía de Guanabara (Rio de Janeiro) and the Rio Negro (Amazonas). They grow and unfold like a great life project. One of the documentary iconographies that open the book—which is not included in the exhibition—is an excerpt from a colonial description of the agencies in invaded lands, written by Pero Gândavo, former secretary of the Torre do Tombo Archive, in Lisbon, Portugal, around 1570.

Panoramic view of photographic installation Antes de você me amar, ela já estava me amando. 6th floor of CCMQ, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.

The main narrative of the book, as well as the story on display, revolves around Yaçã and Inti, two female warriors who meet again and again, in different times and spaces of urban development. In 2024, after four centuries, they meet again when they share a spring in the Tijuca Forest, a forest enclave that, in reality, only exists because of an imperial reforestation policy following deforestation resulting from plantations.

With images like these, considered images as ritual, Laryssa Machada sought to highlight the urgency of “reforesting the collective imagination, where our affections and well-being are possible and full”. And she states that, “in addition to the impediment to exercising their ‘affective cultures’, access to territory and connection with nature were—and are—increasingly reduced by the logic of urban development”.

The creation of images as ritual is grounded in the incorporation of three elements, considered essential by the artist to their performance: presence, faith and collectivity. These photos, on a large scale, go beyond the moment the image was captured and the gesture of taking. The artist creates fictions based on historical precedents and the current situation of contemporary couples, formed by friends and acquaintances.

I believe that one of the greatest insights of the project Antes de você me amar, ela já estava me amando is its potential as affirmative action for dissident memories. It also makes us question how many lesbian, trans, and non-binary artists, positioned as warriors, are included in museum collections, if they are even present at all in various public collections… Laryssa Machada provides us with glimpses of triumph over cis-hetero-patriarchal social expectations, which aim to relegate LGBTQIA+ bodies to complete oblivion.

Estalo, the 14th Mercosul Biennial, takes place from March 27 to June 1, 2025 in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Rogério Felix (1997, Salvador, Brazil) is a researcher and independent curator. They hold a bachelor’s in museum studies and are studying for a master’s in Visual Arts, both from the Federal University of Bahia. Recently, they have been researching African art exhibitions at state museums and institutions in Salvador. They are interested in the relationships between (im)material culture and contemporary art, operating through documentation, cultural-educational action and criticism, in addition to organizing collections and exhibitions. They currently work as a docent at the Mãe Mirinha de Portão Community Museum, located in the city of Lauro de Freitas, where they organized the exhibition Paths of Memories: One Hundred Years of Mãe Mirinha de Portão (2024).