Fire Letters 2024

Fire Letters is the result of a curatorial and artistic collaboration between Ellen Pirá Wassu and Ritó Natálio. Blending poetry and performance, Fire Letters is an experiment that transmutes and digests historical documents about deforestation and institutional policies of disappearance, conservation, and memory. In a live conversation about fire and nutrition, the artists explore these documents by bringing together episodes and practices applied to territory in Brazil and Portugal.

As we studied museums, we found ourselves turning ever more towards the forest. […] The materials kept in museums are question material. In an airconditioned room, thermal policies ensure that Indigenous masks, made of straw and buriti fibres, are kept half-alive and frozen for longer than was ever intended. If the palm and buriti fibres, lovers of hot temperatures and allies of rituals, could speak, they would say: “Warm me up so that I can go home.”