"Rastro do meu pai", 2019. Monotype of my father's body with blood on fabric. 230 x 240 cm.
 
The work "Rastro do meu pai" consists of a monotype produced by my father's body printed on a fabric with blood, resembling a shroud. There is an alternation between presence and absence, life and death, expressed in the way the image is produced.
There is a performatic dimension in this work, but it is lost and leaves behind only the trace of the gesture. By presenting only the result of the action I seek to affirm the trace as an index of absence. This absence is reaffirmed through the monotype procedure, as the image is formed by the contact of the body with the fabric, but it is only visible when the matrix body is absent, creating a duality relationship between presence and absence. The material used to print the body also contain a duality. The blood recalls death, but it's also a material present in childbirth and that is fundamental for life. 
Besides, the gesture of duplicating the body is "mortifying", since the practice of creating a duplicate of a body is historically associated with the practice of death masks. The duplicate image shows a duality. Producing the trace of this body preserves it, transmits it to posterity, and at the same time ruins it and makes it disappear.