Using my family’s archive and 35mm negative from my own childhood I started to play with words - “mine” as a noun, and a pronoun. But these two words quickly signified only one thing: that which is taken without permission.
Once defined as a mine the terrain is subjugated to desecration and exploitation. No better symbol to such acts than “Serra Curral Del Rey” - a mountain ridge in the state of Minas Gerais which corralled and gently embraced my existence and that of the inhabitants of my hometown of Belo Horizonte as I grew up.
I traced its slopes from memory, as I’ve seen it through my child-eyes. The mountain is drawn by my feet when it was in front of me; above my head when behind me, and sometimes so close by my side, I believed I could touch it.
In this work the drawn ridge becomes a revealing layer - from negative to positive - bringing into light the hidden secrets of the mountain and that of my body - we were both continually corrupted and pillaged, we were both being abused. The mountain was consistently carved by the noun “mine”, and my innocence continually taken as a pronoun. “You are mine”, said an adult to a child. Not in words but in repetitive acts. Little by little we sustained devastation and loss while keeping our facades intact. By labeling the mountain-body and the child-body with the word “mine” these facts can no longer be ignored.
Of that mountain now only remains a hollowed shell. I hope to prevent humans from such un-souling. A reclaiming of the body can take place, and ownership can be transferred back to whom it rightly belongs If the word “mine” is self-proclaimed. In this instance, sovereignty is restored and can no longer be taken away. Not without blunt infrigement, violation and betrayal. Something the mountain knows too well.
ThIs leads to the last bilingual word-play embedded in the type-setting of the title of this work. I am a so-called “MINEIRA” - someone from Minas Gerais. I tell it to anyone who cares to listen. And I have photographic proof of all stereotypical role I’ve carried as such. But this romantic view of my origins. This idealized upbringing In a society engrained In the mining culture means only one thing: I am a witness and an accomplice to multiple environmental crimes.
As the mountain watched over me, I watched as the mountain (and the other mountain, and another mountain…) was bluntly infringed, violated and betrayed.
“Mine_ira” can now only be written with a hyphen. Not as mere finger-pointing full of rage (ira) against the mine and the men behind it, but as self-responsibility for my own silence and inertia - as “mea-culpa. By relinquishing victimhood and accepting my role as participator and spectator I am now in a position to unleash “mine-rage” and call for the well overdue and deserved criminalization of the mining industry.
You are criminals. We all are.
