In the Pina Luz Octagon, the artist Monica Ventura explores materialities and symbols associated with Afro-Amerindian cosmologies in a sitem-specific produced in dialogue with the monumental scale of the building’s central space. By interweaving the layers of time that inhabit the Octagon, the The artist proposes to the visitor a place where human connections can converge, receive and radiate energy, based on the relationship between body and architecture.

Ventura articulates the mythical and ancestral repertoire present in vernacular architecture to confront some characteristics of the building: the verticality, the circularity and the bricks kept exposed since its inauguration as the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios in 1905 and thus perpetuated, even after the Pinacoteca became a mutheir and underwent successive changes until culminating in the major renovation of the early 2000s.

In the exhibition space, a set of gourds hang over a circular structure. Each gourd, although representing a unit of meaning, converges into a collective hanging from the sky to follow, through the reflection of a splash of water, on the underside of the dirt floor where the public is invited to step. The circular roof establishes a different horizontality to the space, creating an atmosphere of intimacy, protection and shelter, also evoking the construction of a magnetic field. The experimentation between the created space and the public is enhanced by copper, a material with a high capacity for conducting energy, which covers the structures that support the sky created by the artist.