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DULCINÉIA, 2017


                 
                
               
             In 2017 I was invited by the collective Dulcinéia Catadora, formed in 2007 by Lúcia Rosa, after a collaborative work with Eloísa Cartonera at the 27th Bienal de São Paulo, to develop a “book-work” with the women who belong to it, as a celebration of 10 years of this collective that produced books with some artists such as Fabio Morais, Élida Tessler, Keila Alaver and Paulo Bruscky.

             The process of creation of the DULCINÉIA was based on meetings with the  members of the collective at Cooperglicério, in the neighborhood of Glicério, in the center of São Paulo, where they, as street pickers, separate the recyclible materials. Meetings also took place in a squash in the vicinity of the cooperative, where of one of the members lives. DULCINÉIA was born from conversations and exchanges so that, together, the four women members of the collective and I arrived at the book.

             It was in one of these gatherings at the house of one of the street pickers that the conversation went on about the idea of naming a name, of the collective having a proper name, a woman, a character, now faced by the experience of those four women who make a great effort to keep the collective Dulcinéia Catadora alive. For reflection and discussion, I asked the four members of the collective questions like: Who was Dulcinéia? What do each of you have of Dulcinéia? What does Dulcinéia mean to you?
 
             The idea of the name as hole was born from these questions, of reading as hole, of the book itself as hole, of art as hole, of a name that is title and a title that is name, of reading, book and art as experiences of crossing or that do cross each other and how these aspects were problematized in the process of making the book.

             DULCINÉIA was exclusively made with cardboard boxes used first as packaging and “written” with an instrument similar to that one used in the act of picking  papers, as well as by punches to make holes in the construction of the nine letters that together form the name Dulcinéia. The book presents the letters of that name, each on a page, “written” by different gestures, forces, expressions and states of mind, that is, different letters. It is a name – DULCINÉIA – accomplished by eight hands and four heads of the women members of Dulcinéia Catadora. Each book has at least one letter or mark from one of those four women mixed with others. Therefore DULCINÉIA, the book, is a composite body constituted and constructed by four different handwritings of the four women who integrate it: Ágatha Emboava, Andreia Emboava, Lúcia Rosa and Maria Aparecida Dias da Costa.

Thiago Honório, May 2017.