The Lajes (slabs) are a series of works that obbey a quite simple constructive method: to pair, to confront, to compare newspaper clips (usually from ‘entropic’events) with ad images (usually cropped from their ‘backgrounds’, sometimes from packing as well).

The technique is an hybrid of collage and casting (procedure taken from the construction of cheap tombstones in Brazil, where the paper is added to the mould where wet concrete is poured. When the concrete dries the paper becomes ‘walled’ instead of pasted.  Laje is a word in Brazil with multiple meanings, spanning from the geological to the urban: for example a laje can be a natural rock formation or the ceiling of poor house in a favela.

The result is a delicate dialectics between the promises of advertising and the reality that frustrates it. In common with steles and archeological tablets, they witness historical events, thru the starkly juxtaposed temporalities of publicity and news. This incongruence is also material: the paper fragility  shares the same space of the cement brutality.

The images used in the slabs are from an archive of newspaper clips, which is being collected since 2001.

They are also a series of works that runs parallel to the bigger projects, which are mostly site-specific. The slabs have a domestic scale not only in output, but mainly because they are homemade  (the moulds comes from cardboard boxes taken from street markets) and produced  on a quotidian time frame.