Itamarandiba, MG, 1983
Josi's work is born from the interweaving of personal experiences, family knowledge and the cultures of the places where she grew up, especially the Jequitinhonha Valley, known for its rich artistic tradition. Her works combine drawing, sculpture and installation, and incorporates natural materials such as clay, earth pigments, bean broth, branches and bamboo – to give shape to a dreamlike dimension, in which the earthly plane is always connected to the cosmological amplitude. The themes of genesis and of life’s transformational cycles are central to her creations, which often represent birth and figures in the acts of weaving, molding and cooking. These images conjure up a vital force, collective action, the paths of emotions and bodily movements that shape the world. Clay, with all its geological and ancestral weight, is her sculpture’s main material, so that touching, kneading and modeling reveal themselves as a means of reconnecting with the earth and resisting the erasure of history. In her hands, each piece weaves together personal experiences with collective stories, and connects the Earth's energy to ethereal fluxes, revealing vestiges of the creative force that invents and undoes the world, and that gives purpose to the bodies that inhabit and transform it.