Artist: Andrea Cius
Country: Brazil
WASA Member: Array
Title: Inventory Of Absences II
Medium: watercolor
Size: 24x32cm
Details:
In a fragmented world shaped by political and cultural borders, this work asserts the existence of a language that precedes and transcends words.
The act of weaving becomes a metaphor for connection , a shared construction built through gesture, repetition, and care. The circular form held by the hands evokes continuity, suggesting that meaning is not isolated, but collectively formed.
This gesture is deeply rooted in my family history. My great-grandmothers were immigrants who arrived in Brazil during times of conflict, navigating displacement while learning a new language. In the absence of shared speech, communication survived through making, particularly through crochet and handcraft.
These woven practices, passed from mother to daughter, carried memory and belonging across generations. They functioned as a quiet but enduring system of transmission, where culture was preserved through touch rather than words.
The fluid nature of watercolor reinforces this logic. Its dissolving edges resist fixed boundaries, allowing forms to merge, overlap, and expand, echoing both the instability of contemporary divisions and the possibility of connection beyond them.
Ultimately, the work gestures toward what exceeds physical and historical borders: a continuity that persists like light across distance. These invisible inheritances are carried forward through generations, not as fixed narratives, but as subtle forces of connection that survive displacement. What is passed on is not only memory, but a way of remaining linked beyond rupture, where boundaries dissolve, and what was once separated continues to resonate, quietly and persistently, across time.