Beads That Tell the Forest
Elaine Pessoa
Don’t expect postcard landscapes from Elaine Pessoa. In her world, the forest is not a
backdrop but a living being: it breathes, pulses, and carries within it the memories of time.
For ArtNow Report’s special Amazon edition, we step into “Images Told in Beads,” a project
that reveals the artist as an alchemist of sensitive geographies, a translator of visible and
invisible worlds.
In the heart of the Amazon, on the banks of the Tapajós River, she lifted her camera the
way you lift an ear. She wasn’t chasing images; she was listening. Photographed in the
vast shadow of the Samaúma — the “mother tree,” guardian of worlds — these images
became maps of sensation. Through her lens, she captures more than a view: she gathers
traces of the unseen, layers of history, and an ancestral murmur that seems to hang in the
air.
Born in São Paulo and trained in Industrial Pharmacy, Production Management, and later
Photography, Elaine Pessoa has built a singular path around the image and the aesthetics
of experimentation. Her work moves between photography, printmaking, installations, and
artist books, always in dialogue with memory, nature, time, and spirituality. Represented
by Galeria Mario Cohen, her pieces have been shown in museums and collections across
Brazil and abroad, blending deep research with rare sensitivity.
The beads — tiny, glimmering — appear as threads stitching together this invisible
territory. Heirs to a history of trade and imposition, they are also symbols of resilience and
spirituality. In her installations, they are not decoration; they are presence. Each bead,
side by side with the images, seems to hold enchanted secrets: ritual chants, running
waters, and colors that both bleed and heal.
Elaine is not interested in documentation — she seeks revelation. Her art draws close to
what remains hidden: an atmosphere where nature and culture merge. Photography,
printmaking, and installations unfold into an immersive landscape, where art ceases to be
mere record and becomes ritual.
There is a quiet dialogue between weight and lightness: between the dense pull of the
photographs and the suspension of beads in space. Blues and whites evoke rivers and
wind; red recalls sap and blood; gold, the light that burns deep within the forest. Through
these intertwined elements, a landscape is born that is felt more than seen — a space
where the gaze slows down until it becomes body.