Time was like this one. Life was like it is now. When everything ended in the sea.

There in the underwater galaxies of the ocean depths, where humanity had never existed, life continued after we were covered over and avenged by the waters. From the surviving beings, a new flora and fauna developed. People disappeared for good and landscapes started to be continuously reconstructed. Due to winds, ocean currents and earthquakes, transformation became the only constant. And through a fold in time, this story never stopped repeating itself.

As was foreseen by Fernanda Galvão’s works, the places lost their names. The only possible way to understand the new world was to trace relationships between atmospheres and climatic characteristics of different spaces.

There were environments submerged by the sea, ice-cold and in shades of blue, which were more or less murky, depending on the movement of currents or the creatures that dwelled in them. These environments sometimes contrasted with places of open forest, in which plants reacted to the winds and earthquakes. At other times they combined, becoming subaquatic forests.

There were also interactions between air and sand, with all the unforeseeable effects that a windstorm can have on desert dunes. In those cases, relationships between plants stood out amidst a sandy and nearly imperceptible environment. Or, moreover, a sandstorm rose up from the ground, headed toward the sky, becoming nearly indiscernible from the depiction of wind.

Fernanda Galvão’s paintings are the only records of this world in transformation. The artist acts like the character George Orr, in the novelThe Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, who in his dreams had the power to change the past, present and future. In the artist’s case, however, the transformations are no longer brought about by human or alien intelligence, but by interactive dynamics between other living beings. Humanity died in the sea and life continued on Earth.

“The hills muttered and dreamed of falling in the sea” is a phrase from that same novel by Le Guin. It describes the moment when Orr, by dreaming, is bringing about an alien invasion on planet Earth. Here, it is a phrase that corresponds to a moment in which nature was personified as it became free of people. In which the hills conversed in secret and dreamed of falling into the sea. Soon thereafter, everything did, in fact, fall.

 Luana Fortes