Research

  • Entangled Ecologies
  • GRANTEE
    Paula Koeler Lira & Tatiana Pinto
    GRANT YEAR
    2023

Tatiana Pinto, "Landscape and voices already heard from Sweden and Portugal," 2023. Digital photo collage. Courtesy the artist

Entangled Ecologies gives voice to nature to share and then discuss the changes in the human-nature relationship, the insanity of colonial wars, the understanding of borders, and the definitions of identities across the nation-state. What do the vegetation and geological formations of the Atlantic coast in the country called Portugal have to report to us? How does Lapponian vegetation feel absorbed and managed by Sweden? What was the name of Brazil before colonization? Did it have a name? Did it need a name? Nature bears witness to what these lands have seen, heard, and experienced. Walking and experiencing this land only with the body, listening attentively and absorbing the voices of the territory, the project brings into dialogue three lands that are called Brazil, Portugal, and Sweden. A real but imagined conversation featuring what each place has to tell us.

Paula Koeler Lira received a bachelor’s and a master’s degrees in ecology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Lira holds a PhD in Ecology from the University of São Paulo with a one-year at Imperial College London. She was a postdoc at the University of São Paulo from 2012 to 2013. Since 2015, Lira is an assistant professor in the biology department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Her research focuses on understanding the effects of landscape modification on biodiversity conservation. Lira’s earliest work was mainly in rural landscapes in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. However, she has been moving towards studying urban landscapes. Understanding that the existing global environmental crisis is a result of the current view of man apart from nature, Lira believes that through her work in urban landscapes, she can work towards approximate people to nature.

Tatiana Pinto is an architect and artist based in Stockholm. After practicing architecture at her office TAMABI, Rio de Janeiro, she became involved in research during her studies in the Building and Urban Design graduate program at University College London. She works as an independent researcher practicing artistic research from a decolonial feminist perspective. Her work has been featured at Manifesta 12 in Palermo; Swedish Arts Grants Committee; and at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Stockholm. Her main research interests revolve around social inequalities, the political aspect of space, and the responsibilities of architects in current societal struggles. Her transdisciplinary work combines architecture, art, activism, writing, and public interaction. She works as a tutor in the post-master course Decolonizing Architecture at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, Sweden.