leite de pedra

(milk from stone)

“Milking a stone” is a popular expression that means doing something
impossible, achieving good results despite adverse conditions. In a certain way we have a
translation of Hélio Oiticica’s famous motto: “From Adversity We Live”.

In Leite de Pedra (2018), Matheus Rocha Pitta, in partnership with the NGO Redes da Maré, invited residents to literally milk a stone: a liter of milk was offered in exchange for a kilo of stones.

The cartons of milk were emptied (participants brought empty bottles) and were filled with stones. The cartons of milk were converted into “bricks”: cement was added to keep the stones together. Each “brick” maintains the image of milk on the carton and makes up the sculpture now shown in the exhibition space.

The result seems impossible: a petrified pallet of milk (1080 liters). The same unit of measurement used in the distribution of goods returns as a sign of a redistribution: the capital used in the mechanism of the production of the work was not money, but the impossible, stones.

Leite de Pedra (Milk from Stone)

2018

stones, milk packing, concrete and wood.

120 x 120 x 120 cm

demonstration of procedure