Could be in a dream                                              

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Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth.

Virgínia Wolf

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Fata Morgana is an optical effect that occurs on the horizon, from a thermal inversion in air and water temperatures causing light deviations that alter and confuse our perception. The phenomenon takes its name from the sorceress of Avalon who had the power to change her appearance. Under the effect of Fata Morgana, boats appear to float in the sky, creating an illusion on the horizon.

 

A place that does not exist, the horizon is an illusion in itself. Although an unreachable destination, it ignites the intuitive desire to go in that direction and discover what lies beyond the border, between the visible and the immaterial. It is this desire that guides us, which reveals the impetus to act and build what is not yet there. An invitation to mystery, escape and imagination. An unknown territory, pointing to the horizon is pointing to the future. As a direction, the impossibility of reaching it makes us remain in a movement, in which the point is the displacement.

 

In the historical context of the navigations and European invasions of the 15th and 16th centuries - directly related to the dystopian present - the horizon was the reference for a new idea of ​​perspective in painting: the perspective with a vanishing point that is located on the horizon line and where all the transverse lines go, producing the aspect of reality in painting.

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In addition to the revolution in pictorial production, a hegemony of global power was born, structured in a configuration (xxxx/xxxx/xxxx/xxxx) that has since silenced and derailed any other form of existence that is not directed towards that single point on the horizon. And that continues, in its imbalance and dysfunctionality, revealing the urgency of orienting ourselves from other perspectives.

 

In Spheres of Insurrection: Notes on Decolonizing the Unconscious, Suely Rolnik points out, based on Lygia Clark’s artwork Caminhando (1963), in which the work is no longer the object but the experience of the action, the need for a continuous process to reconfigure the unconscious of this perspective of reality that was determined and instituted.

 

Calling the creative power to act in the instinctual unconscious, which moves the actions of desire in their different destinations[1], we redirect the transverse lines of perspective to other points on the horizon line. Like the light under the effect of Fata Morgana; deviate the functioning of the mind and deceive our perception system, altering the axes and structures so that another world can emerge.

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[1] ROLNIK, Suely. Esferas da Insurreição: Notas Para Uma Vida Não Chulada. Sistema Solar. 2020.

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*Text present at the exhibition's catalog.