Língua (White)

mixed media on cotton.

Plaster, sugar, coconut milk

sound (19:50 min)

Inquiring into variations on the colour white and its symbolisms in Western, patriarchal, and cis-heterosexist conceptions of purity and belonging, the artwork Língua (white) by Luiza Prado de O. Martins engages with personal histories of migration, queerness, illness, and kinship through a recipe for a coconut cake. The artwork consists of a sculptural installation; in it, sugar sculptures mimic the materiality of minerals and rocks, while delicate, broken plaster sculptures mimic the delicate pipings of cake icing. Both sets of sculptures rest on a canvas marked by folds of transportation, the movement of the artwork from studio to gallery echoing the movement of bodies across geographies. A recording of the artist reading the text White — part of an ongoing body of research on colours, pigments, and colonial circulation routes — overlays the installation.