Luiz Zerbini – Chosen Stars

Luiz Zerbini was born in São Paulo in 1959 and began his artistic career in the late 1970s. A key figure of the so-called Geração 80 [Generation of the 1980s], he is known for large-scale, exuberantly colorful paintings that are generally figurative, with forays into geometric abstraction. His compositions encompass landscape and natural forms. His practice moves across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, monotype, writing, and video. Zerbini is also a member of the group Chelpa Ferro.

He is represented by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel (Brazil) and Sikkema Jenkins & Co (New York). His work is held in collections of institutions such as Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil; Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Christen Sveaas Museum/Kistefos-Museet, Norway; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy; and Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, France.

There is an inversion underway: the vegetal world, which Western tradition relegated to silence, is beginning to be recognized as an interlocutor. Not because plants have started speaking on our terms, but because we have learned, slowly, to listen differently. This epistemological shift runs through anthropology, biology, and botany, and reaches the arts as well, where artists and researchers are beginning to treat the plant not as an object of representation, but as a partner in investigation.

Two recent thinkers illuminate this shift in perspective. In The Life of Plants (2018), Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia proposes that understanding a plant is also understanding the world: it does not inhabit the environment—it is the environment, mingles with it, depends on it, and transforms it. British writer and artist James Bridle, in Ways of Being (2023), extends this reasoning to the whole of the living world, arguing that plants, animals, and natural systems have been revealing forms of intelligence and knowledge that modernity failed to recognize—and that Indigenous epistemologies have long cultivated as living knowledge.

In this light, learning from a plant becomes something else entirely: it is not a matter of translating nature into concept, nor of extracting from it a knowledge already formulated; it is a matter of sustaining an attention that only sharpens through contact—through observing rhythms, through the responses that matter offers, through what it refuses and what it proposes.

It is in this field that Luiz Zerbini’s research over recent years is situated, in collaboration with João Sánchez (Estúdio Baren). By making the plant itself the matrix of the monotype, the work calls on leaves, barks, fruits, and thorns to leave their mark directly on the paper—not as representation, but as pressure, as the trace of an encounter. From the monotypes, a singular forest has emerged: dense, varied, alive on the surface of the paper. “For my part, I would put the whole world through the press,” the artist has said.

The exhibition, curated by Ana Roman and Luiza Mello, presents a cut of roughly ten years of this investigation. The starting point goes back to the book Minhas impressões [My Impressions] (2016), unfolding into other publications—among them Monstera Deliciosa Pândanus Coccothrianax Crinita Útilis Cabeluda Mucuna (2019) and a book on ethnobotany still in development. Throughout this trajectory, monotype has consolidated itself as an expanded field, moving across supports and modes of presentation.

In Estrelas escolhidas [Chosen Stars], the monotypes are organized as parts of an expanding garden, where paper, plant, and landscape cease to be clearly distinguished. The presence of paintings derived from this same process makes visible the continuity between mediums and gestures, revealing the experimental dimension that sustains the work as a whole. What emerges from these surfaces goes beyond image: it is the record of another intelligence—silent in words, eloquent in matter.

Since its founding, Instituto Tomie Ohtake has built a trajectory marked by a commitment to contemporary art—not merely as a venue for exhibitions, but as a site of research, knowledge production, and openness to practices that expand what art can be and say. To welcome Estrelas escolhidas is, for the Instituto, a gesture consistent with this history: to recognize that there are forms of artistic investigation that operate outside conventional disciplinary boundaries, that find in the living world a legitimate and urgent source of knowledge. At a moment when the relationship between humans and more-than-humans becomes one of the central questions of our time, the Instituto affirms its vocation to be the place where these questions take shape.

We are grateful to the Ministry of Culture, which, through the Culture Incentive Law (Rouanet Law), made Estrelas escolhidas possible. The exhibition is produced by Instituto Tomie Ohtake, supported by its patron, Nubank, and sponsored by Motiva, through Instituto Motiva, and by Aché Laboratórios Farmacêuticos at the Silver level. It also receives support from the gallery Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel.

Instituto Tomie Ohtake

Luiz Zerbini began his artistic career in the 1970s, and from an early age divided his time between painting classes and the beaches along the Brazilian coast. His way of seeing developed through a direct engagement with landscape. Born in São Paulo, he found in Rio de Janeiro an environment that would become central to his artistic trajectory. For many years, his studio near the Jardim Botânico extended into daily contact with plant life. Later, he created a garden of his own, cultivating many of the species that appear in his paintings and prints, drawing his working space even closer to the vegetal world.

The botanist Stefano Mancuso argues that drawing plants is necessary to empirically identify the rules that govern them. Zerbini has devoted himself to this exercise for decades. As the artist explains, “When I paint a bromeliad, I know what it is like, I know where the thorns are. The bark of the banana tree: I know that volume, I know its internal structure, which is porous and filled with air. It is as if it were an experience of understanding the world, the molecular composition of things.” There is a profound connection between the artist and matter, at once sensorial and spiritual: what is at stake is not the representation of nature, but the creation of ways of being with it, of moving according to its rhythms, and of perceiving what normally escapes notice.

It is within this movement that monotype emerged as a new field of investigation. Printmaking was transformed through an encounter with the printmaker João Sánchez—a partnership that remains active to this day: composition takes shape in the very moment of printing, without a prior plan, through the meeting of ink, paper, and organic matter. Improvisation guides the work, and the studio becomes a laboratory where mistakes are welcomed. Over the years, the research expanded through the use of silk, felt, lithographic stone, and a wide variety of papers, as well as unconventional matrices. In 2023, the first collages of monotypes on canvas appeared.

In monotypes, image emerges through contact. The pressure of the press transforms the plant’s volume into surface and its physical presence into a trace. The plant leaves its mark, asserts its form, and reveals veins, textures, and densities that only become visible through touch and pressure. In this process, the plant is not a model but a collaborator, its presence shaping the possibilities of the image. These works can also be understood as landscapes—layered surfaces in which the vegetal world continually remakes itself, extending one of the central themes of Zerbini’s painting.

The tables conceived for the exhibition deepen this emphasis on process. The movement of the sea is evoked through prints with wave-like patterns combined with branches and leaves, recalling both Brazilian beaches and Zen gardens. Water reappears in a large fabric painted with reflective metallic paint and in monotypes in dialogue with the Japanese printmaking tradition of Ukiyo-e, the so-called “pictures of the floating world.” Two tables organize other areas of the research: one brings together artist’s books, experiments with lithographic stone, and an ongoing ethnobotanical project; the other presents prints on silk and a variety of papers, matrices made from tree trunks, among other materials.

Estrelas escolhidas [Chosen Stars] presents a decade of Luiz Zerbini’s graphic work. For the exhibition, the artist revisited his personal collection, bringing together many pieces seen side by side for the first time—a process of reconnecting with his own trajectory, in which memory and choice became intertwined. The title refers to the “botanical highlights” that emerged throughout the research like guiding stars: plants singled out for their beauty, rarity, or strangeness. Together, these prints form a vegetal constellation in which each image embodies a singular experience of drawing closer to the living world. Each printed leaf is a record of contact: evidence that two bodies have met and that something has been transmitted.

Ana Roman and Luiza Mello

Curators

Luiz Zerbini began his artistic career in the 1970s, dividing his time from an early age between painting classes and the beaches along the Brazilian coast. His way of seeing developed through a direct engagement with landscape. Born in São Paulo, he later found in Rio de Janeiro an environment that would become central to his artistic trajectory. For many years, his studio near Jardim Botânico extended into daily contact with plant life. Constant observation nurtured a familiarity that deepened over time. After relocating his studio, the artist created a garden of his own, cultivating many of the species that appear in his paintings and prints, drawing his working space even closer to the vegetal world.

The botanist Stefano Mancuso argues that representing plants requires both observation and drawing. According to him, we can never truly understand a plant by looking at a photograph or trying to infer its principles from a superficial perception; drawing is necessary to empirically identify the rules that govern it. Zerbini has devoted himself to this exercise for decades, developing a perception that goes far beyond mere contemplation. As the artist explains, “When I paint a bromeliad, I know what it is like, I know where the thorns are. The bark of the banana tree: I know that volume, I know its internal structure, which is porous and filled with air. It is as if it were an experience of understanding the world, the molecular composition of things.” There is a profound connection between the artist and matter, at once sensorial and spiritual: what is at stake is not the representation of nature, but the creation of ways of being with it, of moving according to its rhythms, and of perceiving what normally escapes notice.

Zerbini has developed a practice that moves between painting and a range of other media, including sculpture, installation, sound, writing, and video. Within this movement, monotype emerged as a new field of investigation. His encounter with João Sánchez changed his relationship to printmaking, a medium he had once seen as difficult to approach. The printmaker’s technical rigor, combined with a certain naivety on the artist’s part toward the process, opened up room for experimental creation. Here, composition takes shape in the very moment of printing, without a prior plan, through the meeting of ink, paper, and organic matter. There is no complete control; improvisation guides the work, and that is precisely what interests the artist. The studio becomes a laboratory where mistakes are welcomed, allowing new paths to emerge.

Over the years, this research expanded in multiple directions through the use of silk, felt, lithographic stone, and a wide variety of papers—ranging from Japanese kozo to tree bark—as well as unconventional matrices such as wooden boards, screens, and cut-out masks. These explorations led to a collaboration with the brand Joules & Joules to develop custom-made paints using pure pigments, allowing for a denser and more saturated palette in comparison to industrial alternatives. In 2023, the first collages of monotypes on canvas appeared, unfolding into the pictorial developments presented in Estrelas escolhidas [Chosen Stars].

In monotypes, images emerge through contact: the pressure of the press against the paper transforms the plant’s volume into surface and its physical presence into a trace, preserving the memory of that encounter. The plant leaves its mark, asserts its form, and reveals veins, textures, and densities that only become visible through touch and pressure. Printing plants becomes a way of connecting with them, bringing to light details that often escape ordinary perception. Here, the plant is not merely a model but a collaborator, its presence shaping the possibilities of the image. These works can also be understood as landscapes—layered surfaces in which the vegetal world continually remakes itself, extending one of the central themes of Zerbini’s painting.

The tables conceived for the exhibition deepen this emphasis on process, rearranging recurring elements within Zerbini’s practice. In Ribeirão preto (2026), the movement of the sea is evoked through prints with wave-like patterns combined with branches and leaves. The ensemble recalls both Brazilian beaches and Zen gardens, where stones and drawings in the sand compose symbolic landscapes. Water, a recurring element throughout the exhibition, reappears in a large fabric painted with reflective metallic paint and in a recent series of monotypes, in dialogue with the Japanese printmaking tradition of Ukiyo-e, the so-called “pictures of the floating world.”

The installation Mesa livro [Book Table] presents the publications Minhas impressões [My impressions] (2016) and Monstera Deliciosa Pândanus Coccothrianax Crinita Útilis Cabeluda Mucuna (2019), alongside experiments with lithographic stone and matrices, as well as plants and prints from an ongoing ethnobotanical project developed in collaboration with the anthropologist Pedro Luz. Meanwhile, the installation Varal [Clothes Line] (2026) brings together a new panorama of prints on materials such as silk and a variety of papers, as well as matrices made from tree trunks, among other elements. By bringing processes, references from the artist’s universe, and finished works into proximity, the tables make visible the artist’s trajectory while also asserting themselves as autonomous installations.

Estrelas escolhidas presents a decade of Luiz Zerbini’s graphic work, revealing the central place this research occupies within his artistic practice. The creation of a printmaking studio with Estúdio Baren directly across from his painting studio established an ongoing routine of intense exchange, intensifying the dialogue between the two media. For the exhibition, the artist revisited his personal collection, bringing together many works shown side by side for the first time in a process of reconnecting with his own trajectory, where memory and choice became intertwined.

The exhibition’s title refers to the “botanical highlights” that appeared throughout the artist’s research like guiding stars: plants singled out for their beauty, rarity, or strangeness. For Luiz Zerbini, they are inexhaustible sources of knowledge—not only visual, but also tactile, relational, and spiritual. Gathered together in the exhibition, these prints form a vegetal constellation, a territory of contemplation and learning in which each image embodies a singular experience of drawing closer to the living world. Each printed leaf bears the trace of an encounter: evidence that two bodies have met, that something has been transmitted, that the distance between humans and plants can, if only for a moment, disappear. There is also a form of care at work here—an attentiveness to what is alive, renewed with every print, every layer, every renewed contact between the artist and the plant he has come to know through its thorns, its bark, and the hidden volume of its interior.

Ana Roman and Luiza Mello

Curators

Ana Roman/Luiza Mello: To start, we’d like to revisit your trajectory in broader terms—how did that path lead you to an encounter with Luiz Zerbini?

João Sánchez: I studied printmaking at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and shortly after graduating, I moved to Madrid. There, I came into contact with a very strong network of print editing studios, where the printer works directly with the artists—something that isn’t nearly as common in Brazil.

I worked at two important studios and stayed there for four years. I then returned to Rio de Janeiro in 2011 and opened a studio in Rio Comprido. One of the first publishers I worked with was Leonel Kaz, with whom I had already produced an artist’s book by Waltercio Caldas.

In 2015, Leonel proposed a research project focused on developing different techniques for printing plants. I ran a series of experiments using methods such as aquatint, photogravure, intaglio, and monotype. He brought these tests to Luiz Zerbini, who at the time was looking for ways to reproduce leaves—including in resin. The results were convincing, and that is how we began working together. More recently, in late 2022, Estúdio Baren became almost entirely dedicated to working with Luiz, taking on his studio, equipment, and infrastructure—a shift that also transformed the scale and continuity of the research.

Ana Roman/Luiza Mello: Thinking about both that beginning and this more recent period of intensified collaboration, we’re interested in understanding how this work is organized as a continuous process of experimentation. What characterizes this research over time, and in what ways do certain procedures return and transform?

João Sánchez: From the very beginning, it was a highly experimental process. Many of the things we do today were already present at that initial moment, even if still in embryonic form.

Over time, the research kept unfolding. In 2023, for example, when we began working at the Gávea studio, we returned to our research on wood, building on earlier work. We started using wood veneers mounted on steel plates, creating modules that can be rearranged.

These veneers are inked like intaglio plates: the ink settles into the hollows of the grain and produces an image that is remarkably faithful to the wood. From there, we began discovering different textures—some resembling trunks and branches.

At the same time, we began incorporating other elements—such as backgrounds etched with sandblasting, creating wave patterns that function as a kind of aquatint. Gradually, these elements came to work together.

Ana Roman/Luiza Mello: Could you describe in more detail how the printing process works—especially the monotype—and how these different technical layers come together?

João Sánchez: The monotype starts with an inked surface, wet paper, and the plant between them. In the first print, the plant acts as a mask. It can then be inked and reused as a matrix. But the process doesn’t stop there: we keep combining different procedures. There may be an inked base, followed by a wood matrix, and then an overlay applied with a sprayer or brush.

In the more recent work with stones, for instance, we first print the elements—wood, leaves, objects—over a sprayed background. Then, we print again with more diluted ink, applied as a varnish with a wide brush. And in some cases, we add a third matrix, marked with lines that produce effects resembling rain. The image is thus built up in successive layers.

Ana Roman/Luiza Mello: Over the course of this process, the research seems to expand into other image-making devices as well—such as screens, masks, and figures. How do these elements come into the work?

João Sánchez: This happens in parallel. In 2023, we began working with screens made from meshes and even simple materials like kraft paper. Gradually, these screens came to be combined with other elements—such as wood and plants—and later also with masks cut from paper and EVA foam, creating shapes of the human body, arms, and hands. This led to works like the series that brings together these figures with screens and plants. These elements are gradually absorbed as yet another layer within the process.

Ana Roman/Luiza Mello: One important aspect is the research into ink, which seems to redefine the work. How does it develop, and what are its practical implications?

João Sánchez: The research into ink grew initially out of a limitation in access to materials, and developed above all from 2023 onward, through a partnership with Joules & Joules, a Brazilian artisanal oil paint brand. We began producing our own inks from pure pigments, adjusting the oil-to-pigment ratio for each one. The linseed oil is also prepared in a specific way—thicker than what is normally used in painting. This allowed us to build a broad palette, with many colors and combinations, and to work with inks far more pigment-rich than industrial ones. At the same time, we gained greater control over the mixture and over how the ink behaves in each technique.

Ana Roman/Luiza Mello: And how do these inks come into the different technical procedures you described?

João Sánchez: Each ink is formulated with its use in mind: some need to be thicker, others more fluid. Since the work combines relief, intaglio, and monotype techniques, the ink has to respond to all of them. So there is no single solution—there are many.

Ana Roman/Luiza Mello: Alongside this intensification of color, you also develop works without ink. How does that take shape?

João Sánchez: In these monotypes, the image is formed solely by the relief and the sap of the plant. The paper is wetted, and the pressure of the press causes the sap to be released and absorbed into it. This creates a very precise image—without ink, using only the plant’s own matter.

Ana Roman/Luiza Mello: There is also an important dimension in the relationship with lithography and image transfer. How does this research develop?

João Sánchez: We started trying to transfer monotype images onto the lithographic stone. We discovered that EVA foam works as an intermediary—almost like a press blanket—allowing the image to be transferred with very little loss. From there, we were able to bring these images onto the stone, which is then worked through the traditional lithographic process, based on the repulsion between water and grease. More recently, stone fragments printed with monotype have ceased to be merely matrices and have become works in their own right.

Ana Roman/Luiza Mello: Thinking about the working dynamic, how is this process organized in time?

João Sánchez: It is a continuous process. We keep noting ideas, testing, and accumulating experiments. There are moments of production and others of technical development. There is also the unexpected: materials that turn up, plants, objects. All of this enters the process.

Ana Roman/Luiza Mello: Finally, considering this long and quite cumulative trajectory, how do you understand this encounter with Luiz Zerbini today?

João Sánchez: It was fundamental. My work has always been oriented toward this kind of collaboration. Luiz is very open to experimentation and improvisation, and he listens deeply. He always sees in mistakes a new path toward something unforeseen. Some of those mistakes find their place years later and become the starting point of a new work. It is a highly dynamic process. Over time, I came to better understand his visual language and to translate that into printmaking. This partnership has allowed us to develop a continuous body of research over many years, and the exhibition Estrelas escolhidas [Chosen Stars] grows out of that.

I have been wearing the same pants for six days. I was walking through the woods just a little while ago, before boarding this plane back to Rio de Janeiro. I was looking for the botanical highlights that had been introduced to me as stars. Botanical stars are chosen plants. Absolutely beautiful, perfect, elegantly drawn—or else aggressive, covered in thorns, or gigantic, prehistoric, rare, nearly extinct. Sources of infinite knowledge.

The other day, wandering about the nature of colors, it occurred to me that green functions as a kind of gray. The forest that covers the earth in green spreads a warm chromatic neutrality. Against it, animals, flowers, and fruits of vibrant colors pop and glitter like stars on a moonless night. Multicolored birds, small metallic insects, masked monkeys, camouflaged felines, pitangas, araçás, cashews appear and disappear behind the leaves in that neutral mass where green reigns absolute.

Long before any of this, when I was around twelve years old, I was playing ping-pong with my brother and the ball fell into the blue, spiny leaves of an agave in my parents’ garden. I was carefully trying to retrieve the white ball from inside the plant without getting pricked when I noticed the prints pressed into that bluish surface. It was my first lesson in printmaking—given unannounced, and only understood many years after that.

Thirty years later, I found a maranta leaf mysteriously perforated. It had small holes distributed in a symmetrical, organized pattern. I thought they might have been made by some architect insect—one of those that keep building indecipherable little things, at least to anyone who isn’t Indigenous, a woodsman, or a biologist. Tiny parallel holes, small colored balls stuck to the undersides of leaves. Little twigs sewn together with straw threads. I thought of extraterrestrials too. I always do. But no—in fact a beetle that likes to feed on maranta shoots is the author of the enigma. It simply bites into the shoot and makes small holes in the still-rolled leaf, which, when it unfurls, reveals the exact sequence of holes, arranged millimeter by millimeter side by side in decreasing sizes, simply because it was rolled up when it was bitten. It is not only nature that is wise—the ignorance of the urban being is spectacular.

My friend João Sánchez and I set off for Instituto Inhotim with the new press in the truck, capable of printing on paper measuring 106 by 81 centimeters. We were on the lookout for the largest and most beautiful leaves in their botanical garden. For a week, we would work exhaustively and happily on the monotypes. Early each morning, we would pick leaves and flowers with the help of the gardener Edimar, would fill up the cart and head to the storage room where we had set up the press.

For my part, I would put the whole world through the press. João would tell me what was possible to print and how we would go about it. The idea was to print the leaves, fruits, barks, and thorns directly onto the paper. To make the leaf itself the matrix. And that is what we did.

Luiz Zerbini

I have been wearing the same pants for six days. I was walking through the woods just a little while ago, before boarding this plane back to Rio de Janeiro. I was looking for the botanical highlights that had been introduced to me as stars. Botanical stars are chosen plants. Absolutely beautiful, perfect, elegantly drawn—or else aggressive, covered in thorns, or gigantic, prehistoric, rare, nearly extinct. Sources of infinite knowledge.

The other day, wandering about the nature of colors, it occurred to me that green functions as a kind of gray. The forest that covers the earth in green spreads a warm chromatic neutrality. Against it, animals, flowers, and fruits of vibrant colors pop and glitter like stars on a moonless night. Multicolored birds, small metallic insects, masked monkeys, camouflaged felines, pitangas, araçás, cashews appear and disappear behind the leaves in that neutral mass where green reigns absolute.

The very next day, I was home at night doing something or other and listening to the gunshots up on the hill when, suddenly, BOOM! A bomb went off right next to my window. A very loud sound. I ran, looked down trying to see something, to make sense of what it was, where it was coming from. I was scared—it had been very close. After a while of not understanding what had happened, I turned everything off and went to bed. The following morning, I took the elevator down and, on the way between block two, where I live, and block one, a little golden rain was falling from the sky. They were very small flowers. Microflowers. They covered part of the ground and kept falling without stopping, at a constant, slow rhythm. How beautiful!

I looked up and stopped. I saw that they were falling from the imperial palm, which already reaches above the floor of the apartment where I live. They fell slowly over my head, my shoulder, marking a yellow and white circle on the ground. It was then that I noticed the flowers were falling from the cluster that emerged from inside an enormous, hard capsule that looked like a smooth green canoe. That was the bomb from the night before. That is how it opens. It bursts when it dries out. It splits open and the cluster tumbles out and hangs there. Gravity and the breeze bring the flowers down. Pure and silent beauty.

The sound, though, is that of a large-caliber shot. Boom! The shape, before it bursts, resembles a cannonball. What force. What a relief. What a wonder. What bliss. I had been worried about the girls walking to school with bombs going off nearby. But they were only flowers—as Fausto Fawcett would say, imperial flower bombs.

Long before any of this, when I was around twelve years old, I was playing ping-pong with my brother and the ball fell into the blue, spiny leaves of an agave in my parents’ garden. I was carefully trying to retrieve the white ball from inside the plant without getting pricked when I noticed the prints pressed into that bluish surface. It was my first lesson in printmaking—given unannounced, and only understood many years after that.

Thirty years later, I found a maranta leaf mysteriously perforated. It had small holes distributed in a symmetrical, organized pattern. I thought they might have been made by some architect insect—one of those that keep building indecipherable little things, at least to anyone who isn’t Indigenous, a woodsman, or a biologist. Tiny parallel holes, small colored balls stuck to the undersides of leaves. Little twigs sewn together with straw threads. I thought of extraterrestrials too. I always do. But no—in fact a beetle that likes to feed on maranta shoots is the author of the enigma. It simply bites into the shoot and makes small holes in the still-rolled leaf, which, when it unfurls, reveals the exact sequence of holes, arranged millimeter by millimeter side by side in decreasing sizes, simply because it was rolled up when it was bitten. It is not only nature that is wise—the ignorance of the urban being is spectacular.

My friend João Sánchez and I set off for Instituto Inhotim with the new press in the truck, capable of printing on paper measuring 106 by 81 centimeters. We were on the lookout for the largest and most beautiful leaves in their botanical garden. For a week, we would work exhaustively and happily on the monotypes. Early each morning, we would pick leaves and flowers with the help of the gardener Edimar, would fill up the cart and head to the storage room where we had set up the press.

For my part, I would put the whole world through the press. João would tell me what was possible to print and how we would go about it. The idea was to print the leaves, fruits, barks, and thorns directly onto the paper. To make the leaf itself the matrix. And that is what we did.

Luiz Zerbini

Erythrina mulungu Mart. ex Benth.

Synonym: Erythrina dominguezii Hassl.

Life form: Tree.

Species summary description: Tree 10 to 15 meters tall, with a twisted trunk, thick bark, grayish and longitudinally fissured, cylindrical branches frequently bearing short, recurved prickles. Alternate, compound, trifoliolate leaves, ovate to elliptic leaflets, 7 to 15 centimeters long, acuminate apex, rounded or slightly cordate base, complete margins, glabrous or slightly pubescent surface. Inflorescences in dense terminal pseudoracemes. Flowers are showy, zygomorphic, with a campanulate, reddish calyx, truncate or obliquely cut at the tip, papilionaceous corolla, intensely red and orange, with a long, recurved standard. Fruit is a legume, linear, dehiscent, up to 20 centimeters long, containing 2 to 6 ovoid seeds, red-orange, smooth.

Area of occurrence: Species native to the Southeast and Central-West regions in Brazil, occurring in the states of Distrito Federal, Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo.

Vernacular names: Amansa-senhor, árvore-de-coral, eritrina, canivete, capa-homem, mulungu, bico-de-papagaio, corticeira, suína, suína-suinã, suinã-tiricero, tiricero, bucaré, mussungu, mulungu-da-flor-vermelha, sapatinho-de-judeu, mulungu-coral.

Medicinal use: Used as a sedative, anxiolytic, and in the treatment of stress, depression, panic attacks, compulsive disorders, insomnia, agitation, and hysterical episodes. In Brazil, Erythrina mulungu Mart. ex Benth. has medicinal use as a narcotic, in the form of a galenical preparation of its bark, as a substitute for opium.

Ethnobotany: In Cruz das Almas, Bahia, an infusion of the seeds is used as an anxiolytic and against asthma, bronchitis, and hepatitis. At the Assentamento Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lulão), in Santa Cruz Cabrália, Bahia, the bark and leaves, macerated in alcohol, treat anxiety. Elderly members of a rural community in Carnaíba do Sertão, Bahia, make use of a bark tea to induce sleep and a cold infusion of the inner bark for strokes. At the Mercado Municipal do Guamá, in Belém do Pará, the bark of this plant is sold to treat insomnia. The Xakriabá people also use the bark of this species in infusions to treat insomnia.

Cultural history: Several species of this genus are considered magical, sacred, and divinatory, with traditional shamanic and psychoactive uses, forming part of the indigenous pharmacopoeia with a wide range of therapeutic indications. Erythrina americana was known to the Maya and mentioned in several of their sacred texts, which invoked it in formulas intended to cure victims of possession. To this day, Yucatec Maya shamans use this species in healing and divination rites. The Aztecs associated this plant with human sacrifice, possibly administering it to ritual victims in order to sedate them. In Argentina, Erythrina falcata is used in the preparation of a type of psychoactive snuff. Erythrina flabelliformis is employed in Tarahumara shamanism, which attributes to it the capacity to provoke erotic dreams. In the Amazon, Erythrina fusca is used as an additive to ayahuasca, as is Erythrina glauca, whose root extract produces narcotic effects. Erythrina poeppigiana is also added to ayahuasca with the aim of imparting a quality particular to it to the visionary experience. In Venezuela, the ashes of several Erythrina species are mixed with tobacco to make it stronger. Devotees of Hinduism associate Erythrina indica, considered one of the celestial trees, with Amrita, the elixir of immortality, suggesting its use to alter consciousness.

Chemistry and pharmacology: Species in this botanical genus (Erythrina) contain alkaloids such as erysodine, erysopine, erysothiopine, erysothiovine, erythrane, erysovine, erybidine, and others, characterized as neurotoxic and psychodysleptic, some with a curare-like effect, inducing muscular paralysis. Their active principles have aphrodisiac, hypnotic, narcotic, sedative, mildly inebriating, anxiolytic, and calming properties.

Pedro Luz

To transform all the dimensions of the world into two

The three, the four, the six, into two

The days, the nights, the pains, the joys,

All the loves

All people flattened into two

All the mountain ranges, the bas-reliefs, the depressions

the trees, mountains, the stars.

The seas into two

(To flatten the whole world into two sole overlapping dimensions)

all the colors, the lights, their textures,

all struggle, all brute force.

The sandstorms, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes

All the hardness of bodies,

the spirit of matter.

All beauty into moons.

To crush all volume,

to engrave onto the flat surface

the history of human existence,

the history of painting, of writing on stone, on wood, on copper.

To run everything over with the giant steel cylinder.

To liquefy matter and to stain with the perfumed and green juice of the world,

on Japanese rice paper,

the impressions of what existed and what escaped existing.

To reveal what we were, who we are, what there was.

The palm of the hand on the walls.

The sole of the foot in the petrified mud.

Time, eternal wind that snores hoarse,

cries low in the throat of the valleys

ooooooooooooooh ooooooooooooooh ooooooooooooooh

… I do not exist…

Luiz Zerbini