Pharmacopoeia of the Invisible

Pharmacopoeia of the Invisible proposes a poetic immersion into the healing cosmologies and plants of power of Bahia, with Jurema-preta as its central axis of investigation. Drawing on the artist's practice in collective health and pharmaceutical care within the Indigenous Health Secretariat of the Brazilian Ministry of Health (SESAI/MS), the work operates at the exact crossroads where scientific knowledge and traditional Indigenous medicines meet and strain against each other.

The body of work stands as a decolonial aesthetic and political manifesto: the paintings challenge the historical attempt to catalogue and domesticate nature, revealing that where Western science sees only active principles, native cultures revere a master tree that holds portals of enchantment, collective memory and resistance.

The pharmacopoeia is resignified here: no longer the coloniser's rigid catalogue of substances, it becomes a celebration of therapeutic pluralism and ritual trance. In translating the force of Jurema and the knowledge of pajés, shamans and midwives who sustain the daily care of Indigenous health in Bahia, the series affirms that true healing is not measured in dosages, but in the sovereignty of peoples and the protection of the mysteries of the earth. This is art that heals, preserves and demarcates territory within contemporary Bahian visual culture.