2022 – Sacred Skins
2022 – Sacred Skins
A meditation on heritage and what we choose to worship
In this series, animal hides become the ground. Sourced in tribute to my father’s Brazilian gaucho roots, the material already carries life, death, and memory. Nothing about it is neutral.
Gold is applied not as decoration but as question. The Golden Calf stands at the center: Brazilian cowhide stretched and covered in gold pigment. The biblical image of the false idol becomes a contemporary mirror — what do we elevate, and what do we sacrifice for it?
Other works push the hides further into ritual object. In one, the skin is punctured and filled with medicine bundles containing Hawaiian lava rock, Utah sage, and tobacco. The sculpture is no longer only surface; it holds offerings.
Across the series, texture rises and falls like weathered leather or sacred vessel. The works sit between painting and sculpture, between ancestry and the present moment.
A meditation on heritage and what we choose to worship
In this series, animal hides become the ground. Sourced in tribute to my father’s Brazilian gaucho roots, the material already carries life, death, and memory. Nothing about it is neutral.
Gold is applied not as decoration but as question. The Golden Calf stands at the center: Brazilian cowhide stretched and covered in gold pigment. The biblical image of the false idol becomes a contemporary mirror — what do we elevate, and what do we sacrifice for it?
Other works push the hides further into ritual object. In one, the skin is punctured and filled with medicine bundles containing Hawaiian lava rock, Utah sage, and tobacco. The sculpture is no longer only surface; it holds offerings.
Across the series, texture rises and falls like weathered leather or sacred vessel. The works sit between painting and sculpture, between ancestry and the present moment.