Plagues, 2017
 
More than 50 years ago, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss observed that the apparent technological simplicity of indigenous societies implies, in reality, worlds that are “a life worth living.” This simplicity, in reality, is an effect of modern myopia, whose idea of development leads us even more into the abyss. The supposed conquest of development, said Levi-Strauss, exists only because of the destruction of indigenous societies, the looting of their cultural and and territorial resources.

That development is slowly burying Earth under layers of concrete. Concrete has become so prevalent in construction that more than half of all the concrete ever used was produced in the past 20 years. Humans have produced enough concrete to thinly pave the entire surface of the planet. The concrete blocks in this work allude to the industrialized society’s exponential growth, which demands more supplies, more production, and therefore, increasing exploitation of the resources and land that once was home to indigenous populations. The teeth can be seen as the primal basic tool that allows human survival, responsible for the first stage of breaking natural substrate into the energy that sustains the body.
 
The work is based on the original tooth molds taken from individuals from Yanomamis tribe during an anthropological expedition to Brazilian Amazonia made in 1971. From these original molds, the work recreates seven dental arches as the 'primal human tool' but trapped into concrete blocks, referring to the self-imprisoning behavior of industrial society, trapped and divided by its own concrete made structures, and beyond, subjecting the indigenous peoples to the same. The history between industrial and indigenous societies has been mostly of oppression, cultural destruction, besides ongoing land exploitation and looting, with the these populations mostly considered as plagues that should be overpowered or exterminated.