Feature - Issue #12
Uýra Sodoma is a manifestation of the biologist, ecologist, visual artist and art educator Emerson Pontes. Uýra tells stories to and for their community via the emotion of the imagination, made possible through art.
A Última Floresta - “A porra da árvore” (The Last Forest - “The Fucking Tree”), 2019. Performer: Uýra Sodoma. Photography and Editing: Matheus Belém. Conception: Emerson Munduruku and Matheus Belém.
Nothing alive resides isolated in this world - and this is independent of time and space. Even under the radical solitude inside a room, the wind blows and brings us memories. The organs of a cell are, for themselves, what the natural phenomena are of the planet: inseparable, codependent and
affect each other. I like to think of the phases of our human lives in this way, interconnected by the steps/times that build us; where every path, whether or not accidental, on the continuum between good and bad, influences what we do and the way we influence the world.
I have decided not to slice my life anymore: saying what year I became an artist, which year I become a biologist or an educator. If these titles happen, it is because they come from somewhere - and this ‘where’ is life. Academic knowledge is as valuable as traditional/experimental knowledge, but the former ignores the latter - even if it has its basis in it. They make a nice pair, but these times we are living in have put both of them to fight. With my art and trajectory, I insist they make peace.
UÝRA