PACHA MANAS
A project by Marina Alegre & Margherita Isola
Thanks the support of the Goethe Institut of São Paulo.
2020 > 2022
Pacha Manas addresses abortion and its criminalization, complex and important issues which permeate the reality of women and about which it is increasingly urgent to talk more here in Brazil, as in the rest of the world.
Starting from the autobiographical experiences of their respective abortions, Margherita and Marina counter the violence with which the abortion experience is silenced and censored by meeting with comrades, women and plants, to collectivize their wounds, struggles, rages, hopes, knowledge.
The project seeks to create spaces of dialogue, solidarity and affection between women of different backgrounds and origins and plants, reconnecting with ancestral knowledge, and promoting practices of resistance, healing and mutual care.
Pacha Manas is a multilayer project made by several hands and the circle is the form and content of the creative process.
Pacha Manas are circles of women, plants and embroidery, in which while we speak our hands sew. Textile art, in specific embroidery, allows the body to be involved in the construction of the dialogue, letting awaken words from its gestures. Furthermore, as experimenters in textiles, we understand embroidery as an ancestral and restorative practice that allows us to expose the mourning and struggles that run through our bodies and, at the same time, awaken the creative and transformative power within us.
Some itinerant circles were held in different parts of São Paulo involving women met in the streets while an online circle was organized during the pandemic in collaboration with the Goethe Institut and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Pacha Manas is an installation as well, that pays homage to the victims of illegal abortions. Women who lose their lives because they are not guaranteed a fundamental right to health and autonomy over their own bodies. We create a hanging garden, occupying a wall of the courtyard of the Goethe Institut, installing vulva-shaped planting bags which serve as shelter for traditional abortifacient plants, such as rute, melon of São Caetano, pennyroyal and parsley, among others.
Pacha Manas is a book that gathers texts with multiple perspectives written by several Brazilian and non-Brazilian women, including the two artists. The book, edited by Editora Funilaria, invites reflection on abortion, patriarchy, reproductive autonomy, care and traditional knowledge, among other topics.
The publication is presented as a reading performance, during which a partecipatory reading of some extracts of the book is interwoven with a collective embroidery and a poetical interconnection with some healing plants for women, including abortion plants. Participants are welcome to nourish the performance with their experiences, memories and thoughts.
Reading-performance tour:
8 December 2022- Goethe Institut, São Paulo
21 December 2022 - Funarte, São Paulo
27 January 2023 - Fundación Entredos, Madrid
Pacha Manas is one of the projects hosted by the Biennial Women in the Visual Arts.
