A QUEDA DO CÉU / THE FALLING SKY
2020
Dhaka Art Summit: Seismic Movements - Bangladesh
The Amazon rainforest has been a recurring subject in Tossin's work, providing a rich study in the impacts of global commodity chains and by extension, the perpetuation of colonial forces enacted on the region’s environment, cultures, and people. Since 2010, She has engaged with Amazônia’s invisible landscapes and highlighted the legacy of extractive industrial incursions through installation, sculpture, video, and photography. A queda do céu (The Falling Sky), named after Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa’s autoethnography, and cosmoecological manifesto, further engages with themes of ecological precarity and social justice. The weavings combine satellite images of the recent fires in Amazônia with Nasa images of the Mars plane named after the forest (Amazonis Planitia), the Amazon River (Rio Amazonas) and the Milky Way. The patterns were made to resemble the geometric partition of land created by agribusiness mostly visible from satellite images or bird’s-eye view. The suspended rotating triptych suggests a constellation of planets that project ambiguous visions of futurity, post-human landscapes and the ruins of a world yet to come.