Adelaide Pinheiro Lima’s art doesn’t begin with a brushstroke—it begins with a diagnosis. To
truly understand her work, one must first recognize that the canvas is merely the final stage
of a process that starts much earlier—in the office of a physician who listens to bodies, and
on the couch of a psychoanalyst who deciphers souls. Her artistic practice isn’t a third
profession; it’s the fusion of the first two. It’s a singular method for examining the world’s
psyche. And her most urgent patient is the Amazon.
Born in Pará, Adelaide’s connection to the forest is not one of discovery—it’s one of origin. Her
clinical eye doesn’t see the Amazon as a scenic backdrop. She sees it as an organism, a
complex physiology of vein-like rivers, canopy lungs, and, most critically, pathologies—the
open wounds of deforestation, the fever of forest fires. She doesn’t approach the canvas
seeking beauty, but like a doctor, first identifies the illness before envisioning the cure.
With the depth of a psychoanalyst, she dives into the trauma of this body. For Adelaide, the
Amazon has an unconscious. It is the “embodied memory” of the planet, a “mother, a
generative and resilient force that, even exhausted, still offers us its embrace.” The realism in
her work is not simply technical mastery—it’s a magnifying glass through which this
psychoanalyst-artist reveals the memories, traumas, and desires pulsing just beneath the
surface.
Once the diagnosis is made—what’s the prescription? Art. Her colors are not literal
representations, but manifestations of the life drive (Eros) battling the death drive
(Thanatos) that threatens the forest. Her canvases, filled with symbolic flora and fauna, are
projections of an “ideal world,” the vision of a healed Amazon—a necessary catharsis after
confronting the wound. Her art becomes the remedy for the planet’s soul.
This unique methodology culminates in the very act of painting. Each canvas becomes the
report of a doctor, exposing the biome’s pathology with the precision of a scan, and the
interpretation of a psychoanalyst, uncovering the symbols of the forest’s unconscious. Her
colors and forms are not an escape from reality—they are the prescription itself: the
manifestation of the life force, a poetic treatment plan for a planet sick in its body and
scarred in its memory, yet still capable of dreaming.
Instagram: @mapinheiro19