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.

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.

Sustainable processes

In my tapestries I use cotton and wool that I do not produce. But most materials are dead plants, seeds, bark and a lot of other plentiful and available materials from nearby gardens and spaces. I've been working dutifully on this sustainable process. Ways that do not produce rubbish or pollutants (including noise, a great nuisance). When people come to see my tapestries I talk about the process and how the spoils from my tapestries are fed back to my plants. 

There are no chemicals or artificial products used or created during the treatment or the use of the materials I collect. Time is one of the most important aspects. It's a slow, hand made process. The materials are at the core of my work. They are not bough in a store and are not available from a catalog. They are made from what nature gives and prepared to be weaved (images below). The color pallet varies with the materials' availability. Not according to my wishes. Beyond art, what if our policies could embed this sustainable guiding principles? What would work and life be?

 

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

April

"(...) the notion that there are benefits to sitting on the edge between order and disorder, and hence having adaptative power, rings true in our everyday lives." Neil Johnson (2009). Simply Complexity. A clear guide to complexity theory. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) March 2026.

February

"Our world flits between contingency and convergence, providing the illusion of structure and order, until one tiny adjustment changes everything. (...) Nature makes a random mistake, or a contingent deviation, and, poof, you've got a new kind of beetle." Brian Klaas (2025). Fluke: chance, chaos, and why everything we do matters. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) February 2026.

January

“You cling to a thread of hope, of course you do. But in the face of the blunt instruments of silence and nothingness, the shadow of hope grows ever fainter.” Haruki Murakami (2025). The city and its uncertain walls. [20260314 update] Tapestries. Bottom, middle «Consciousness» (73 x 80 cm), January 2026, by Monica Pinheiro. 

January

 

"(...) remember that taking care of something else is an important part of taking care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the tentrillion things in this single garment of destiny that as been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed". Rebecca Solnit (2025). No Straight Road Takes You There. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) December 2025.

December

After seeing the video of Mark Rothko murals at Tate Modern, one of the artists mentioned in the book A Therapeutic Journey by Alain de Botton, sharing photo with a reminder of the other side of nothingness. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) December, 2025.

March

A propósito das narrativas exageradas e erróneas da grandiosidade do ser humano, António Damásio, em Sentir e Saber (2020), escreve: 

"É grandiosa no que diz respeito aos seres humanos; menospreza injustificadamente os seres não-humanos; e não reconhece a interdependência e a capacidade de cooperação das criaturas vivas, desde as que existem ao nível macroscópico até aos seres humanos. Em última análise, não reconhece a presença de dispositivos e mecanismos poderosos, presentes na natureza desde o início da vida." 

Photo of tapestry detail «undigitise» by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC). March 2025.

Equinox

A new cycle begins. “(…) it’s about as full circle as it gets. (…) One day at a time, and suddenly you realize life is brighter, life is lighter. You made it through the storm” (Dunbar, 2024), except, other entities bully your neighbors, make them suffer, threaten them, persecute them, injure them, kill them and destroy everything. And in the end, they hope to live happily and securely ever after? Is this the implosion of humanity, cause surely it is not a vision for a better world...

Lucy Claire Dunbar (2024). The Book of Gifts. Fotografia de Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC), março de 2025.

PS - Banda sonora pode ser a que li no que Flora Graham escreveu no Nature Briefing de 11 de fevereiro de 2025, sobre o músico Cosmo Sheldrake (com Nature) que ajudou investigadores a registar «the wonderful, wet and complex” sounds of the fungi and other organisms in the soil, in the words of evolutionary biologist and co-author Toby Kiers»: soil.

Gaze

in english: "a steady and intentional look at something or someone, often for a long time, typically indicating interest, admiration, or contemplation. It can also imply a psychological relationship of power between the observer and the observed". by DuckDuckGo 

in portuguese "a light, thin and transparent cotton or silk fabric, very porous, sterile (or sterilizable), of varying elasticity, thickness, shape, reticulation and size, depending on the use for which it is intended. It is usually used in dressings and surgical interventions, and may be impregnated with medications such as antiseptics." by Wikipedia

Photo of tapestry (80 x 80, belonging to «404 Humanity not found» serie) by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC). January 19, 2025.

January

“The courage not to be vanquished by anxiety, not to hurt others out of frustration, not to grow to furious with the world for the perceived injuries it heedlessly inflicts, not to go crazy and somehow to manage to persevere in a more or less adequate way through the difficulties (…), this is true courage, this is a heroism in a class all of its own.” Alain de Botton (2017). The Course of Love. Fotografia de Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC), janeiro de 2025.

January

 

"Vertigo is from the bottom up. Vertigo has always been defined as a disturbance felt in front of an abyss or at a high point in relation to the space between us and the ground. Reversing the direction of this axis by designating the vertigo that can be felt when looking upwards is equivalent to shifting the focus of this disturbance from the drop, the earth, and the materiality to the rise, the sky, and spirituality."

Placa colocada junto das fotografias da exposição do artista Fernando Lemos, no Espaço Engawa, do Centro de Arte Moderna da Gulbenkian. Fotografia de Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC), 30 de dezembro de 2024.

October

“I experienced awe and wonder at this world we live in. How incredible existence is. The probability of our being here, of having survived as a species in this tiny spec of a planet. I was gripped with a desire to keep going – to experience more of this thing we call existence. It dawned on me how precious life is (Bradley, 2023). But “how do we make Earth a credible base if the land has already been appropriated and reterritorialized by those who are carving it among themselves into so many juxtaposed nations with no common ideal other than the war of each against all?” (Latour, 2023).

Nick Bradley (2023), Four Seasons in Japan. Bruno Latour (2023), After Lockdown: metamorphosis. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC). October, 2024.

July

"how can humans serve as sources of healing and regeneration for every living system they affect?" Regenerative Development and Design, a research study by Leen Gorissen, Karla Bonaldi, Piet Haerens and Lénia Rato. 

A simple question that can help us align our paths to solve the growing crises we are facing. Instead of prescribing a one-way route, the approach invites human actions fostering healing and regeneration as guiding rules/principles. Although holistic, it allows space for individual reflection of actions a person wants to follow (our own paths), but at the same time integrating the living systems we are part of, like communities, countries, climate, nature, organizations or religions. 

Going back to the uniqueness of the study, “not about sustaining what is or restoring what was” but “about creating thriving living systems—social-ecological systems such as places, organizations, communities, and ecosystems—that have the capacity to evolve toward increasing states of health, vitality and abundance over time”. The approach “calls for a new role for humans: to become agents of new vitality and evolutionary capability and to live in conscious alignment with living systems principles of wholeness, nestedness, relationship, and reciprocity, harmonizing human development with the way life works.” 

Engaged in thinking about “what does it take to actively create the wisdom, willpower, and capability to become co-creators of a brighter future, rather than being victims of the mistakes of our past”, while staying within the planetary boundary limits. 

While widening my horizons, I am healing and regenerating by acting on reducing consumption and litter, creating and taking care of a forest in a balcony city apartment (incorporating organic waste as compost and infrastructure), weaving plants into sensorial tapestries, reading and cultivating myself about other beautiful paths, investing in beings that cooperate and flourish together, and actively divesting in things/beings aligned with destruction, greed and revenge.

Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC). Lisbon, May 3, 2024.

June

"(...) from wholeness as a living plant to fragment strands and back to wholeness again as a" tapestry. "The dual powers of destruction and creation that shape the world. Strands once separated are rewoven into a new hole." Grief can "be comforted by creation, by rebuilding the homeland that was taken. The fragments, like ash splints, can be rewoven into a new whole." Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.

Photo of «Shadow Worlds» tapestry (76 x 82 cm) by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) June 20, 2024.

sugar and oxygen

"Carbon dioxide plus water combined in the presence of light and chlorophyl in the beautiful membrane-bound machinery of life yields sugar and oxygen." Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

March

O tempo oferece palcos onde vamos esculpindo vidas. A nossa e a de outros seres que se entrelaçam na nossa. O tempo, esse grande escultor, de Marguerite Yourcenar. No das plantas e no meu, recomeça um novo ciclo. Juntas, vamos esculpindo o tempo. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.