A Língua dos Mortos
"A Língua dos Mortos" (The Language of the Dead) is a work that constructs narratives of affection from fragments of old letters and postcards.
In this work, my role as an artist is similar to that of an archaeologist or a voyeur. I use other people's words to write new stories.
I search through old letters and postcards for hidden stories, then dismantle their original form and intention, reducing them to pure language.
In a way, collecting, studying, cutting, and rearranging these letters is an act of creating a semantic inventory—a collective archive of those who no longer speak to a specific recipient.
Within this archive, there are no cultural or temporal boundaries. The language continues to resonate because whoever felt longing, pain, or love in 1923 also feels it in 2026. This is only possible because this language never truly belonged to any one individual. It is a collective heritage: inherited, repeated, and recognizable to anyone who has ever loved.
Ordinarily, a letter reveals the identity of its writer. Here, however, that perspective is reversed, following a logic that Roland Barthes would call the death of the author. My method takes this even further: I kill not one author, but many, and preserve their words by presenting them as a mirror for the reader.
Although they are dead, their language remains alive and can be recognized by everyone who reads it. I become an author who erases all other authors, including myself. The sender dies, but the recipient—and their reading—remains alive.