alecrim dourado, 468–867
2026 · archival pigment print on cotton paper · 84 × 55.6 cm
A dwarf coconut palm, seen from my son's window in Paracuru, Ceará, appears four ways — as a tile plan, a failed 3D scan, a relief on the wall and a row of tiles on the floor — across a grid of 400 cells. Each cell is one day of my son's life, numbered in red and weighted by the ground beneath it: a topography generated from the places where the scan lost the tree.
The work is bracketed by Alecrim Dourado, the cantiga infantil I sing to my son each night, about a golden rosemary plant “born without being sown”, and by a record of how this cultivated palm arrived in Brazil. Between the two is something I've come to understand as a father: that what grows is rarely unsown. It is tended, counted, returned to every day. The palm was sown for its harvest; my son is tended for nothing but himself.
Each print holds the 400 days of my son’s life up to the day it is printed. No two prints hold the same days, so each is unique.
Part of off grid, on grid, recordings read by rule: one cell to a second, the hour set by the sun. Here the cell is a day. See the series.