Moquém – Game Meats (2023-2024) is composed of leftover parts from two tractors incinerated by the Federal Police after an inspection operation at illegal mining sites in the Itaituba region, Pará. In the artwork, these burned and melted residues are displayed in a compositional arrangement, under a grid structure. On the pieces, there are specific incisions made with pitch: freehand drawings that evoke patterns found in nature. The title of the work points to the reference that underpins this structure. “Moquém” was the name the Tupi people gave to the wooden grill used to roast meats, whether from animals or prisoners prepared for anthropophagic rituals.

The work happens at the crossroads between the visual and material force of these pieces and the metaphorical and conceptual play. On one hand, it dramatically suggests the swallowing of man by man; on the other, it proposes an archaeology of the future, cataloging and arranging the residues of the human ecological loop. In this sense, it comments on the absurdity of the industrial chain that extracts ore by complex and costly means, only to later use it in the creation of machines designed to extract more ore, which are then destroyed and left worthless in the jungle, to be reabsorbed by the soil, somehow rejoining the mineral in its raw form.