HIGHWAY BR-163 CUIABÁ - SANTARÉM

2017-19, 150 x 150 x 10 cm sculpture.


Since 2013, the American global corporation Cargill Inc. has been operating a controversial soybean export terminal in Santarém, within the Amazon rainforest. While some of the packaging formerly contained chemicals for the processing of soybeans to be exported mostly to China and Europe, others contained locally-processed food, which constitutes the last stage of the use of Brazilian transgenic soy for internal agribusiness consumption. The packaging, upcycled by the local population of Santarém and transformed into market bags sold in the city’s local manioc market, are sewn back together again, forming a single fabric of words and images that map the manufacturing cycle of the grain that most threatens the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest today.








© 2021 Barbara Marcel