Interested in the metamorphosis between nature, food, and human life, Diambe creates works that resemble tubers, roots, legumes, and fruits. Such beings, encapsulated in painted bronze, depicted in earthy tones on canvas, or delineated in wandering drawings, suggest speculative contours of life that preserve traces of a narrative that flirts with exuberant tropicality without sacrificing its permanence. Curiously, the survival of forms and history is a recurring theme in the artist’s poetic journey. Throughout her investigations, she has made interventions on objects that carry the memory of a family group, a territory, or even a nation, such as domestic items, family photographs, and historical monuments. Today, she maintains an attentive ear to the stories that emerge, sometimes from beneath the earth and, at other times, from above our heads.
Arco (enquanto Lúculo janta com Lúculo) (Arch [while Lucullus dines with Lucullus]) (2023), a mirrored painted bronze sculpture, is the result of stacking roots, fruits, and branches, forming a hybrid being that balances on its own tension. These creatures seem to have developed ways of inhabiting the world resulting from the clustering of their own unique singularities, ensuring the maintenance of their continuity in time through the formation of a greater whole, composed of autonomous parts. The title refers to an anecdote in which the important politician Lucius Licinius Lucullus (118 BC–56 BC), upon being served a modest dinner by his servants due to the absence of guests, exclaims: “What! Did you not know that today Lucullus dines with Lucullus?!” His protest is promptly met with a banquet. The juxtaposition between the name and the work seems to establish a claim by the artist, who demands nothing less than abundance for the new life forms she conceives, existing beyond the visitor who observes them.
Madeira que cupim não rói (Wood that termites don’t chew) (2023), another sculptural being presented in the Contratempo program, is part of the artist’s series of bronze pieces but carries with it a red and black satin and velvet cape—a direct reference to Exu, a deity in Afro-Brazilian religions. A path-opener, lord of beginnings and crossroads, of transformation, sometimes of anguish, and of communication, he is the orisha of initial movement. Èșù, a word that in Yoruba means “sphere”—the infinite; an old Yoruba saying goes, “Exu killed a bird yesterday with a stone he only threw today.” For him, time is not linear or circular but defies a historical understanding chained in a single direction. Exu teaches us that the battle we fight today did not begin now, but our actions reverberate the forces of those who came before.
Faced with uncertainty amidst transient and shifting landscapes, Diambe’s work, Três luas numa noite (Three moons in one night) (2023), presents an unstable horizon, intersected by paths and holes that extend beyond the frame of the canvas. In contrast to the order of things that humans have instituted for their lives and the lives of others, Diambe’s tomorrow (which is perhaps yesterday) is interchangeable, as this is the skill developed for its permanence in the world; and it is desiring, because it is a delight to be alive.
