Blooming

"Extractivism: a form of excessive extraction that privatizes gains for a minority while socializing costs, particularly when this activity exceeds planetary and social boundaries. Extractivism is distinguished from necessary extraction by its scale and impact, and is characterized by the tendency of businesses to prioritize short-term financial gains at the expense of social and ecological well-being". EY New Economy Unit (2026). From extractivism to regeneration. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) September 23, 2026.

September

Do you have local access to the materials you use? Are they widely available? Are they gathered near the point of creation? Can they be worked with simple, general-purpose tools? Can the spoils of your art feed the garden that feeds your art? Are those spoils nutrients? Do they create conditions for more life to emerge? Can they nourish the infrastructure that supports life, and the life that supports creativity? Is that infrastructure resilient? And your consciousness? Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) September 2026.

September

Anne Stabell on the slowness of catching time with the fingertips: "Repeating the same movements hour after hour, day after day, year after year. Feeling the threads of the warp and the weft against my fingertips, watching the image grow. I feel close to my inner self when weaving. I am taken by the slowness of the technique. I like things to take time. Slowness and the fullness of the idea-trigging moments are in some way related. (...) I pull the thread through a momentary hole in time, and weave the looking-glass image of what is at the other side of time. (...) I also put invisible threads of smaller and bigger everyday events, the books I read, the stories and music I listen to." Image and text from Anne Stabell site.

August

Reencontro com uma playlist de 2017 para alimentar a reflexão "How can we build a fair world? Science and art (SciArt) meet to provoke conversation and inspire answers to this question at the second Resonances exhibition about Fair/Fear." Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) August 2026.

August

Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) August 2026.

 

August

Looking back on Rosa Barba exhibition in CAM, what stayed with me was not only the machinery or the choreography of film. It was the reminder that attention requires time. The works revealed themselves not through efficiency or speed, but through presence. By remaining. By allowing the unexpected to emerge. Much like a garden, a tapestry, or any living process, they offered something different each time they were encountered. Perhaps that was what attracted me back. Not the promise of seeing the same thing again, but the certainty that I wouldn't. The choreography would be different. My position would be different. The work would be different. And so would I.

August

"The secret lies in leaving everything else until tomorrow; in stopping at the most tantalizing moment in the story... or plot; in suspending our gaze and waiting; in managing the promise, and fuelling the desire to hear the rest" in «Xerazade, a coleção interminável do CAM». Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) August 2026.

July

 

I feel gardening as an antidote to the flattening of the senses brought about by increasing immersion in the digitized world. A way of regaining the reality of Earth. While gardening, one can recover a form of stillness eroded by the endless whirlpool of deterritorialized algorithmic communication and manipulation. In the garden, one is allowed to reconnect with the physical pulse of life by tuning in to nature’s rhythms and engaging all of one's senses. Gardening acts as a countermeasure against the annihilation of reality, an antidote to the liquefaction of the real in service of the artificial. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) July 2026.

Maximizing life

It all started with a string a discarded cane and a plant. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) July 2026.

July

 

 

"A growing body of evidence suggests that our perception of our surroundings depends more on bodily engagement than on cognitive modeling. (...) being in the world is necessary to making sense of the world. Perception begins in presence." Nicholas Carr (2025). Superbloom: how technologies of connection tear us apart. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) July 2026.

June

"Sitting down and composing a letter provided women and men with a rare opportunity to contemplate their lives and (...) shape their experiences and emotions into a coherent and meaningful narrative. (...) The delay between writing and reading cleared a space for introspection, for organizing one's thoughts without regard to society's demands for immediate reaction and response". Nicholas Carr (2025). Superbloom: how technologies of connection tear us apart. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) June 2026.

June

I stood there, observing her. The way she moved in that setting... The beauty she emanated... The light glowing around her... I observed the moment in stillness. Saw the lovely imperfections that make her unique... Sensed the exquisite perfume she released through the breeze... But also, her sadness stuck in long overdue memories. The salty water descended through my face, and I embraced her, deeply, in my mind.

"When you try to understand something, it's often most effective to set aside your preconceptions and observe it quietly so that the object of your examination reveals what needs to be understood. (...) pure attention without judgment is not only the highest form of human intelligence, but also the expression of love." Haemin Sunim (2017). The things you can see only when you slow down. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) May 2026.

June

"In all the hours I had spent staring and envisaging, I could never have pictured something so beautiful". I was "caught between things: a moment of stasis and transformation (...), caught between the seemingly separate worlds of science and art" Alice Vincent (2024). Why Women Grow. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) May 2026.

June

Gardening "brought me as much joy" as "places I've travelled to further in the world". It is "like an expansion of life rather than a retreat from it" Alice Vincent (2024). Why Women Grow.  Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) May 23, 2026.

maximizing life

A new tapestry is starting. Engaging with existing materials. Sorting them. Collecting newly available ones from the garden. Feeling. Shaping. Smelling. Disposing old ones as mulch, as seeds for new growth and as food for birds and ants. Letting her play. All part of a new cycle of abundance to be weaved. To create new territories where all terrestrials can exist and play a role. Photos by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) May 2026.

May

"Throughout history, textiles (...) allow our subconscious to intuit a vast range of concepts (...) and speak to our ability to grasp these ideas. Weaving is something we share as humans." Maarit Saloleinen (2024) Interwoven. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) May 2026.

May

“War is a disease of humanity. There is no better healing than peace.” Read in The Conduit. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) May 2026.

sequel

The tapestry finished in May is the sequel to «Connected», "covering very different ground and ending up in unanticipated places", behind the mountain on the upper left side of last year's tapestry.

While reading the transformative book The Entanglement by Alva Noë, the weaving of this new tapestry gained a new direction, opening up new meanings along a line of questions that I had been avoiding. Perhaps the tapestries were not about nature, but more about finding myself within nature. 

Photo of part of the tapestry «Interconnected» (102 x 82 cm) by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC), May 2026.

May

"Artworks afford an opportunity for us to catch ourselves in the act of (...) bringing the world itself, or the artwork, into focus for consciousness. Art makes the aesthetic an opportunity for investigation and at the same time it makes us such an opportunity (...) Artworks are not mere triggers. They stage us". Alva Noë (2025). The Entanglement: how Art and Philosophy make us what we are.

Fotografia captada na exposição de José Pedro Croft «Reflexos, Enclaves, Desvios», no Museu de Arte Contemporânea (MAC), do Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB).

May

"Art is our most direct grappling with the aesthetic reality of our own nature and that of nature itself. Art is the achievement of the tree and the achievement of our relation to the tree. Art is the invention of seeing, and the invention of language". Alva Noë (2025). The Entanglement. How Art & Philosophy make us what we are. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) Maio 2026.