Hidden in the way: Aisthesis of Pareidolia

Through interdisciplinary and intercultural agenciements, the book proposes to sensitize the gaze, sharpening the imagination, confronting fears, and inventing worlds. They are photographs, paintings, infographics, drawings, sculptures, objects and collages related to the research I call aisthesis of pareidolia. I consider pareidolia to be an attribute of human sensitivity, it is also a psychological phenomenon that allows us to find meaning in random stimuli. We all have the possibility of experiencing pareidolia, because we are sensitive beings with the primordial capacity to feel ourselves and the world in an integrated whole, as Duarte Junior reminds us. This capacity received the name of esthesia, a word derived from the Greek term aisthesis, sensitive knowledge, of everything that can be perceived by the body's senses. Professor Pamela Merrill Brekka, who writes the book's introduction, mentions that the photographs, drawings and paintings of machines, humanoids and dragons that make it up present “deeply meditative responses to both nature and the supernatural, as well as human intervention in the natural world.” The works articulate natural/cultural aspects of various regions of Brazil and references beyond Western art, presenting characters, scenes and visual fabulations that combine nature, time and chance. The reader is invited to follow the paths that build my artistic trajectory through Paraná, Mato Grosso, Brasília, and Ceará, and to get to know a little about these territories woven together with references from native people, as well as from African, European, Indian, Japanese, and Chinese cultures. It is with good humor that my poetics is constituted, articulating play and game that, according to Johan Huizinga, are ingredients without which social environments cannot be formed; many cultural practices are also different forms of play. I call ludic aisthesis the playfulness that arise from the contact of the public with some of the works presented in the book, as well as the reverberations of the sensitization of the gaze to the subtleties and details of everyday life. The book welcomes and motivates.