Cemitério verde [green cemetery] was developed by the artist and his mother during the Covid-19 lockdown. After buying “a house of their own” during quarantine, in Alto Paraíso de Goiás, right in the savanna, work began on transforming their new yard. Where there had previously been just beaten earth, they installed a syntropic system based on the principles of organization, integration, balance, and the preservation of energy within the environment. The work evolved into a process of autofiction. The walled-in patch of landscape drew multitudes of birds, insects, and fungi, transforming the garden into a multi-species refuge for life eager to flee the pesticides and clearing fires that are gradually replacing the world’s most biodiverse savanna with soy monoculture. Chades used lockdown to build a juxtaposition between his own practices of co-habitation with a wealth of other species, his family memories, and the creation of image-rituals.
