Yara Pina

Bodies on the ground  (2021)

wooden handles carved into the earth with marks that

refer to the depths of the caves where bodies of missing people

were found in Brazil,

installation

155 x 230 cm

 

In Corpos à flor da terra, Bodies on the ground, I reflect on the post mortem dehumanization that affects the victims of various scenarios of violence involving not only the absence of burials and funeral rites, but also the disappearance of their bodies as a way to erase the authorship and the traces of the barbarism of their deaths. In the latter case, so that they are not located, so that no human trace remains, the bodies, when not destroyed, must be discarded in shallow graves, dumped in clandestine cemeteries, or even left in vacant land, thickets or areas of difficult access. We can call bodies on the surface of the earth, the captives of slave ships buried a foot from the ground in the cemetery of Valongo, the indigents of public cemeteries, the victims of the repression of the Military Dictatorship, of the paramilitary death squads, of the extermination groups, of the court of drug trafficking, militias, police operations, as well as victims of femicide, transphobia and homophobia. The installation is made up of wooden shovel handles embedded in the earth bearing marks that refer to the depths of the caves where bodies of missing people in Brazil were found.