n. Botanic. Vegetable organ attached to a stalk or to a branch by a thin petiole that sustains the green, plain and full of veins limb. Plants breathing organ. Extremely thin plate of a metal or any solid: sheet of zinc. Piece of paper of a certain dimension or size, separate or in bloc, notebook, book. Newspaper, periodical. Metal blade and cutting part of certain instruments. Relation, roll: payroll. At certain sheets, in a given time or moment. New as a sheet, first hand, never used before. Fig. Dead leave, person who lost the prestige or affection of someone. *

This book-object by Evelina Oliveira has been projected to work not as a visual linear narrative but as a sensorial memories inductor (tactile, olfactory, visual) and as a pedagogical object.

The applied techniques in the execution of the illustrations – stamping of vegetable leaves of different plants and trees in cutouts and collages on the paper support – contribute not only to indicate a sensorial, geographic and temporal journey that materializes in the diverse textures, animal forms and plants and in the chromatism, but as well as to be a catalytic agent of interest and curiosity about the different organic forms: identification/recognition, geographic origin/its characteristics.

On other hand, the title Folhas (Leaves/Sheets) plays with its inherent meanings in relation with the object – tree leaves, paper sheets that make books – that one can run through, paper sheets produced from the cellulose of trees, trees with several and different forms, textures and colors on their leaves. Thus the reader is invited to run through this object-book feeling the smell of the paper and, in the process of visual reading, to decode and recognize emotions and memories through the identification of forms, colours and possible places.

The exhibition will take place within the first edition of the Post-graduate course in Illustration and Digital Animation, in which the illustrator is visiting professor.

N.T. The Portuguese word Folha can either be translated in English to leaf (botanic) or sheet (paper, metal).

Créditos