Wishes of the land
That apart became a part
Of the land's trading tongues
Sense of senses
Watching the colour grow
As false marrow
Of faking bones
Hollow
Piercing
Tastes and songs
Imaginary light
Of pulsing tones
For her solo booth at Artissima with Duarte Sequeira Gallery, Vanessa da Silva presents 'Mamão com Açúcar', a series of textile works stretched on canvas.
The bright screen-printed patchworked textile works are hand stitched and layered with logos of products imported to the UK from Colombia, Ghana and Brazil, amongst other countries, adding to a sense of place and referencing the artist's Latin American origins.
The works, acting as portals, highlight and at the same time conceal the layers of commerce, the economic agendas, the colonial legacies and the metabolic rhythms of capitalism. Da Silva is interested in the ambiguity of the image, ideas of exchange and concepts of trade and value.
We might think about how we locate ourselves within all that, the extractivist mentality, the exotification of the tropics and the consequences of colonialism in today's globalised world.