artists and books, wanderers through nature itself(Paulo Silveira)

For many Brazilians involved with image and culture, the figure of the historical traveling artist has likely remained vivid in their memory since their school days. In my case, during adolescence, this human figure emerged in the classroom as something fascinating, and it has remained so to this day. It was a foreign artist, usually European, a skilled illustrator, who abandoned the comfort of home to venture on the long crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Upon arriving, they recorded in drawings our geography, fauna, flora, ethnicities, and whatever else was of interest to visual reportage of that time, and which is indispensable today.

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M.A.L.A 2025

There are paths that are not measured in kilometers, but in internal journeys. Crossings that don't begin when our feet move, but when something inside us decides to leave its place.

We live in hurried times, preferring shortcuts to processes, quick answers to well-thought-out questions. But the crossing (travessia) , this one we're talking about wasn't done quickly. It demanded a different kind of time, a different kind of presence. A listening that doesn't fear silence. A gaze that doesn't recoil from the density of what it encounters.

Each artist who arrived here brought their own intimate landscape: territories of doubt, of trial and error, of discovery. And it was within this interior that the crossing first took place, before any fold of paper, before any graphic gesture, even before we named what we were seeking. It was a movement that groped for what did not yet exist, opening a passage where there was no path.

The crossing was also an exercise in living with the unfinished. It demanded accepting what creates doubt, what hesitates, what is not resolved immediately. It demanded caring for what emerges slowly. It demanded companionship: people, books, conversations, exchanges that extended a hand to us when we didn't quite know where to go.

Ultimately, each book created here was a unique map of this journey. Not a fixed route, but a trace: marks of what had to be traversed for the work to find its form.

And perhaps that was the most beautiful thing: realizing that the journey didn't end with the object. It continued in the gaze of the one who leafed through it, in the dialogues it evoked, in the connections that only revealed themselves with time. Crossing was and always will be movement, even when it seems like a pause. It was exchange. It was openness. It was a way to move forward without losing the depth of what makes us human.

2025 also marked a strong engagement from the artists. Many accompanied the books during their journey in Paris, while many others were involved in the book fair, the exhibition setups, and the photographic documentation of the books and exhibitions. The artists grew closer to the mentors and to each other, and this crossing strengthened bonds, fostering a spirit of collectivity.