On both sides of the Atlantic, people of African ancestry worship water as the site of the principal spirits. This spiritual bond becomes complicated by the onslaught of the slave trade, which inaugurates the terror of the immeasurable ocean, symbolizing the wound of separation for over nine million people. Taking its title from a Spanish word that designates imperfect pearls, molded by fortuitous currents, the work presents an array of symbolic visual elements —the amber surface of boiling dendê oil, the tragic slave ship—that together with Nina Simone’s voice and the words of Mira Albuquerque’s poem Divisor, orchestrate the pain and the oppression of bodies forever in transit.
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