PAULA DO PRADO
  • eguahé porá
  • exhibitions
    • quarai 2022
    • birth of sucuri 2022
    • a place where we can be together 2022
    • iyanla 2019
    • kalunga 2020
    • in the fibre of her being 2021
    • kuña/womxn 2021
    • pallay yuyay 2021
    • playdate 2018
    • lucky swag 2015
    • face to face 2014
    • odalisque 2014
    • sepiasiren 2012 *adult content*
    • mellorado 2012
    • adiafa/diyafa 2011
    • where yah from? 2010
    • rebirth 2008
    • I am...Black
  • projects
    • everyday ceremony
    • Uruguay Indigenous Biennale 2023
    • zines + books
      • bomba 2017
    • design isolate 2020
    • meroogal 2020
    • heartstrings 2018
    • TOAF 2016 + 2017
  • interviews + talks
  • studio do prado
  • bio + cv
  • contact
  • eguahé porá
  • exhibitions
    • quarai 2022
    • birth of sucuri 2022
    • a place where we can be together 2022
    • iyanla 2019
    • kalunga 2020
    • in the fibre of her being 2021
    • kuña/womxn 2021
    • pallay yuyay 2021
    • playdate 2018
    • lucky swag 2015
    • face to face 2014
    • odalisque 2014
    • sepiasiren 2012 *adult content*
    • mellorado 2012
    • adiafa/diyafa 2011
    • where yah from? 2010
    • rebirth 2008
    • I am...Black
  • projects
    • everyday ceremony
    • Uruguay Indigenous Biennale 2023
    • zines + books
      • bomba 2017
    • design isolate 2020
    • meroogal 2020
    • heartstrings 2018
    • TOAF 2016 + 2017
  • interviews + talks
  • studio do prado
  • bio + cv
  • contact

quarai 2022

​Quarai is the name of one of the various rivers that forms part of a network of waterways connecting Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. Rio (river) Quarai is located to north of the Brazil/Uruguay border, it is also the name of a town in Brazil along the rivers edge. In Uruguay the river is known as Rio Cuareim. My paternal family continues to reside on both sides of rio Quarai and nearby towns. My father remembers fishing for bagre a type of catfish in the river in his youth with his older cousins, using snails from his aunt and uncles quinta for bait. I am told I visited nearby areas as a very young child including my grandfather’s birthplace, but I don’t remember.  My own personal connection to Quarai is marked by temporal and geographic distance but the river is in me and I am in the river. My remembering and connecting to Quarai at a distance is made possible and facilitated by living nearby to a network of wetlands and swamplands (known as Lachlan Swamp, Centennial Parklands) on Gadigal Land.  

This work is part of my ongoing conversations with Rio Quarai, with the African Bantu Kongo ancestors that found themselves reliant on the river and the Charrúa, Arachan and Guarani ancestors who had always been there. Quarai is a weaving in progress. It is intersecting narratives, hicotea thinking and the various species of turtles, lizards, snakes and other life that inhabits the river. It is the Bantu story of the lizard and the chameleon, messages and timing. It is a reference to the cerritos and the sambaqui shell and burial mounds that hold ancestral memory. It is a remembering in thread, pebble and clay.

Quarai is currently showing as part of "Reading Into Things" @PariAri until 12 March 2023. It was first shown as part of "Studio Creep" at Backspace Gallery. 
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  • eguahé porá
  • exhibitions
    • quarai 2022
    • birth of sucuri 2022
    • a place where we can be together 2022
    • iyanla 2019
    • kalunga 2020
    • in the fibre of her being 2021
    • kuña/womxn 2021
    • pallay yuyay 2021
    • playdate 2018
    • lucky swag 2015
    • face to face 2014
    • odalisque 2014
    • sepiasiren 2012 *adult content*
    • mellorado 2012
    • adiafa/diyafa 2011
    • where yah from? 2010
    • rebirth 2008
    • I am...Black
  • projects
    • everyday ceremony
    • Uruguay Indigenous Biennale 2023
    • zines + books
      • bomba 2017
    • design isolate 2020
    • meroogal 2020
    • heartstrings 2018
    • TOAF 2016 + 2017
  • interviews + talks
  • studio do prado
  • bio + cv
  • contact