An invitation to create together more conscious ways of living and inter-being.
We Are Nature is an experimental space of new perspectives applied to different spheres of living. A lot of people in the world are working for an alternative future, and have a message to give or knowledge to share, whether they are artists, scientists, academics, writers, or any other creative profession. Concrete thinking, subtle interventions, ample and unlimited knowledge are aiming at an integration of all forms of wisdom to generate a shared and multi-dimensional vision. Residents have been invited to live the places, to be in harmony with the land, so they can access the creative force that will lead them towards the next level of their artistic or intellectual production. It is to be for the residents a way to get out of their regular way of producing, and for the place a way to enrich and aggregate new knowledge.
Current Residence
Emmanuel Rengade, Pasha Radetsky, Marciel Campos, Mieko Ukeseki and Fernando Teixeira Rodrigues
Multidimensional Cross (Eucalyptus Wood and ceramics, 2021)
A cross is a symbol much older than Christianity. It essentially expresses horizontality and verticality. The Christian cross is also the symbol of Man, with arms outstretched to receive and give. It symbolizes the Divine in Man.
This 6-meter-high piece is made up of a set of 9 crosses: 4 facing the 4 directions, each inclined on the previous one, forming an ascending spiral. It requires the collaboration of all men (and women) from the 4 corners of the Earth for collaboration and evolution. It is rooted in the depths of Mother Earth, and extends to the sky, expressing that man is placed between the motherhood of the Earth and the evolution of the Cosmos. The ninth cross (the number 9 is a symbol of divine perfection) is the shape of the shadow on the path, which expresses the idea that there is an immaterial logic at play.
Four other smaller crosses are made of ceramic tiles placed in the center of each of the wooden crosses, but with arms of equal length. These tiles show some symbolic representations of humanity’s ancestral traditions, pre-Christian, and also pre-Jewish or pre-Buddhist, but subtly integrated at the symbolic level in most religious or spiritual traditions. Its North/South/West/East colors and orientations are rooted in traditional South American symbology (Maya, Lakota): yellow in the East, where the sun rises, black in the West, where night appears, white in the South, red in the North. .
This new work expresses RECONCILIATION, EVOLUTION, COLLABORATION AND UNITY. These values embody the mission of Fazenda Catuçaba: to allow visitors to rediscover these values for themselves, restoring and developing their own connection with the Divine in Nature, while spending immersive time in nature.
The process of the work
This is a collective project. Emmanuel Rengade received for no apparent reason 4 miniature crosses in the oldest monastery of Christian times (the orthodox monastery of Saint Anthony, deep in the Egyptian desert), while researching the origins of monastic life. Back at his home in Catuçaba, he tried to understand the meaning with his friend Marciel, who ended up putting the 4 crusades in the exact format.
Emmanuel invited artist Pasha Radetzki from New York (but originally from Belarus), who has been doing a lot of woodworking at the Farm’s Artist Residency for the past 10 years, to come and participate. The team researched how to obtain large enough pieces of ecological wood (eucalyptus). The assembly of the crosses was done in collaboration with Fernando Teixeira Rodrigues, a wood designer from São João del Rey, and with the ceramicist Mieko for the tiles: both friends of the house for over 10 years. The Japanese Mieko Ukeseki is one of the founders in 1972 of the community of potters of Cunha, 30km from the farm (and one of the most important communities of potters in Brazil). Many people were involved in the work of moving the crosses that weigh over 250kg each. They were assembled with minimal technical assistance by the local team at Marciel dos Campos and Catuçaba.
A collaboration between France, Japan, Belarus, Brazil, Egypt, from the 4 main continents, in itself expresses the universal dimension of the Cross, for which lighting and a garden are also being made, so that people passing through the neighborhoods can stop and pray or meditate.
