In “Blooming in the Amazon,” Érica Nogueira issues a vital warning: the planet’s breath is
our own, and it is at risk.
Art sometimes has the courage to translate what science warns us: that life on Earth
depends on a vital exchange of breath. Érica Nogueira takes this premise to its most
poetic — and paradoxically precise — consequences. In her new and masterful series,
“Blooming in the Amazon,” the artist dissects the forest’s anatomy to reveal lungs made
of petals, where every inhalation is an act of beauty, and every exhalation, a warning.
Érica pulls us beyond the contemplative landscape, immersing us in an organic system
of which we are a dependent extension, pulsing in a fragile, deeply threatened unison.
Her work is a dive into the metaphor of the “lung in bloom.” With the fluidity of watercolor
and the incision of pen, the act of breathing becomes a spectacle of exuberance and
finitude. The artist affirms that her imagery evokes “both humanity’s breath and life
itself,” recognizing the “ephemeral” nature of both. It is a visual testament that the
breath animating us is not ours; it is on loan from the planet. When asked about the
duality of heart and lung, Érica is categorical: the lung represents the “essence of
breathing.” Her conviction, almost a manifesto, is carved in her words: “Without life
(nature) on the planet, there is no life (humanity)!” This urgency seeps into her
pigments, a silent lament she verbalizes: “People today are living as if there is no
tomorrow… and maybe there won’t be… if we continue like this…”
This is not the delicate flora of Parisian gardens, nor the arid resilience of desert flowers,
themes of her previous series. The Amazon’s palette, for Érica, is an explosion of
“exuberance and intensity” that inspires “strength.” This duality shapes her creative
gesture: the process begins with awe — “the Amazon is exuberant” — but quickly
deepens into a “message of alert,” the awareness that “soon there will be no more time
to wake up.”