Displacing Territories: Project for the Brazil/Uruguay Border is a journey as a solitary traveler that I undertook at the end of April through the border zone of the pampas, specifically from Barra do Quaraí to Pelotas.

My experience reflects the rescue of the memory of the landscape, through the collection of stones that were classified and then organized. Its exhibition was held in the city of Pelotas, specifically at the Leopoldo Gotuzo Art Museum, during the month of July, and later as part of the 8th Mercosul Biennial, held in Porto Alegre between September and December of 2011.

_The act of collecting stones from a particular location and transporting them to another is perhaps one of the first signs of civilization, a moment when man understands himself as a transformer of his space and, consequently, possesses the power to interfere with Creation.

Like a collector of objects of no importance, I’ve develop an action as a traveler crossing the Border of Rio Grande do Sul/Uruguay almost in its entirety, seeking elements present in the local landscape to serve as a representation of that territory.

When I choose a stone, I mark its exact location of collection and cross the border bringing it back to Brazil. Its movement accentuates the idea of belonging — the place where they were / the place where they are — and of a memory intrinsically stored within the stone itself, its constituent mineral, its mass, its physical characteristics, its age through the millennia it has crossed.

The artist’s work in this case resembles that of an archaeologist who collects, classifies, and organizes the natural landscape. Thus, I seek to understand the Place: mine and the rocks’ own, because when I am on the Uruguayan side, I also feel more Brazilian. And in this way, I bring Uruguay inside Brazil, pieces that cross borders and reorganize according to parameters other than geology, geography, politics, or economics. A country/place contained within another, represented in future drawings that resemble photographs, as if they were a catalog of the memory of the place, a memorabilia, a reclassification of the landscape where objects carry within them all the possible information of the place from which they came.

I see the landscape as a counterpoint for measuring oneself, an external reference that can give the exact measure of the size of the self. It’s a romantic idea that pays homage to the last great explorations of the 19th century, when the poles of the planet and the peaks of the highest mountains were, without a doubt, a discovery of the place while also a discovery of the human limit itself.

My relationship with the landscape lies in a first attempt to construct an ideal place, an imitation of nature as a faithful portrait of relationships of perfection and balance. Thus, I want to encompass all the possibilities of understanding a location, not only through sensitive means like drawing or photography, but through rational ways of understanding Place: latitude, longitude, altitude, mathematical calculations, and technical/scientific references. The mysteries of the force acting in secret in nature are recreated, sometimes in a brutal manner, other times in a delicate and almost imperceptible way, in an act of comprehending in an integral manner the matter of which we are made.

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The text above was written by Marcelo Moscheta and appears on his official website.