Jeane Terra and the Alchemy of Memory In "Pele do Rio"

Jeane Terra, a Brazilian visual artist from Minas Gerais, based in Rio de Janeiro, opened her solo exhibition, “Pele do Rio” (“Skin of the River”), at São Paulo’s Janaina Torres Gallery.

The exhibition digs into themes of endings and erasure that Terra’s work is all about. Mixing it up with painting, sculpture, photography, and video art, she creates this dialogue between her own memories and the collective vibe of the Amazon, giving form to both pain and hope in her art.
“I became a memory prospector,” Terra says, which really captures her process of hunting down and giving new meaning to stories. “Pele do Rio” hits home the urgency of capturing what’s here and gone, turning ruins and memories into something precious.

By diving into places marked by shared loss, like the Amazon, Terra’s aim is to go beyond the personal to something universal, pushing us to think about how temporary life is and why it’s crucial to save our cultures and the environment.

With her experience, she developed a signature technique, “pele de tinta” (“skin of paint”). Terra describes it as this kind of art alchemy: “Not using paint to paint, but subverting paint, using it as a support so that I could shape the painting, as if I were creating a sculpture from the painting itself.” She uses software to map out embroidery patterns from photos, linking old-school female craft with today’s tech, resulting in art that looks kinda like analog pixels.

With “Pele do Rio,” Jeane Terra challenges the public to face how fragile life is and think about how we’re messing with the planet. “I want people who see my work and my exhibitions to leave with a question,” she states. By tackling stuff like climate change and reckless development, the show’s a wake-up call, urging us to think about our role in keeping life going.