CARLA MALDONADO

Noméo is a digital video with audio made in collaboration with Marli Bárbara Prado Vaz. The work is in response to the fires in the remote wetlands of west-central Brazil that started burning mid July 2020, threatening one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet and the world’s densest population of jaguars roam.

In Noméo I collaborate with Marli Bárbara, an ecofeminist Indigenous activist, community organizer and musician from the Dessana ethnicity who lives and works in Manaus, Brazil. I perform Bárbara’s Ícaro by intertwining deeply personal visuals with Bárbara’s voice.

An Ícaro is a spiritual song, a message that was granted to Bárbara from her ancestors during a ritualistic ceremony. Both artists’ expressions are laden with a sense of unease as the Brazilian Rainforest and Wetlands burn to ashes. Bárbara’s Ícaro echoes the connection between animals, nature and women; comparing the violence done to native jaguars’ with the violence done unto women. This piece is a spell of transformation, but also communicates the importance of acknowledging the harm and pain society has caused women, animals and the Forest.

With this piece we find hope in each other, in unity.

"For decades, ranchers have used flames to cheaply return nutrients to the soil and renew pasture for their beef cattle. But those blazes, fueled by drought, now burn with historic force, racing across desiccated vegetation. The biggest fires in the Pantanal this year are quadruple the size of the largest fire in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, NASA satellites show.
A record 23,490 square kilometers have burned through Sept. 6 - nearly 16% of the Brazilian Pantanal, according to a Federal University of Rio de Janeiro analysis. " Reuters