TEMPS D'IMAGES
20 anos

Sufocada em Lágrimas (Stifled Tears) is an artistic reflection on forest fires and their impact on the landscape in the interior of Portugal. The artist wants to create an immersive and sensory piece that transmits the theme in its emotional dimension. The wildfires that have taken place in recent years in Portugal, and in other parts of the world, are directly related to climate change. This is why it is essential to include wildfires in the overall framework of climate change, as well as to understand how climate change is directly affecting people’s way of life in their daily lives. Thousands take to the streets to demand climate justice and the European Union calls on member states to accelerate the transition to green energy. Environmental impact is also part of the economic equation. In Portugal, communities in the areas most affected by forest fires, and experts in this field, have been warning of the devastating effects large fires on the country’s landscape. Although there is a general understanding of the problem, there is a clear inability to act on it. Part of the solution may be to return to the ancient rituals of forest control and firefighting, which were lost with the desertification of the interior of the country. There are no foreseeable solutions and I, sitting in front of my television screen, just cry. My ritual is performative. My TV allows me to witness the fires while keeping me safe at home, watching from a distance. On the other side of the screen, a man is in despair after failing to save the house where he was born. He cries. What if we cried together? Can our tears produce enough water to extinguish the fire?Sufocada em Lágrimas establishes a bridge between art, technology and the environment, through different artistic languages (performance, video, installation, architecture) and proposes to bring to the urban environment the theme of rural fires, questioning the way we think and feel about, their socio-cultural impacts and the preservation of the environment.