Brazil’s historical trajectory has been slightly different to its Spanish-speaking neighbors. Even in terms of its Buddhist diffusion, the largest country in Latin America had a head start thanks to a noticeably larger immigrant community of Japanese, which has been flourishing since 1908. Nevertheless, due to a paucity of locally releases and funded publishing houses that could circulate Brazilian Portuguese translations of Buddhist texts and commentaries, circulating the Dharma was restricted largely to immigrant Asian communities. Even in today’s cosmopolitan and vibrant São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, many educated professionals and younger Brazilians discover Buddhism in an individual and personal manner, bringing the Dharma into their lives in an intimate and unique way.
Catarina Gushiken, an acclaimed Brazilian artist, is an exemplar of making Buddhist and Asian philosophical teachings uniquely her own. In her spacious and airy atelier in São Paulo, she spoke to me about some of the diverse but interrelated topics that are on her mind these days: the erotic sacred and her new “Mountain Body” series (hereby referred to in its Brazilian Portuguese original, “Corpo Montanha”). This is the ecstatic transcendent that represents a constant search for origins, for the primal source of comfort and joy. It is an artistic pathos that connects the contemporary openness to sexual expression to the ancient feminine or “gynocentric” traditions that are closer to the great religions than one might think.
“Corpo Montanha” is striking and distinct in its presentation: Catarina paints black ink on body of all shapes and sizes, exploring the symbolic relationship between the human body, nature and memory while drawing inspiration from the traditions of ancient Chinese landscape painting. “‘Corpo Montanha’ is a series that emerged from my research to get into the interdependence between body, nature and memory. While painting, I notice how these boundaries dissolve – the interior and exterior merge, creating a landscape where the organic, the erotic and the spiritual interlace themselves.
The result, Catarina continues, explores this fusion between the ephemeral and the eternal, revealing the fragility and power of existence. This is connected intimately to her affinity with Eros, sensuality, and her connection to the erotic made holy. “I feel that Eros is the indefinite, the force that unite us. In my process, the erotic body manifests itself in the symbolic field, in forms and gestures that escape words. Eros is the pulse of life: when I freely relate him to nature and its landscapes, I find joy, integration and a sense of fulfilment. This is what I look forward to translate in each brushstroke.”
Inherent in the principle of eros is an embrace of nature and the human form as one and the same. There is no shame or judgment, but rather, an embrace of every figure as a canvas. Catarina has many subjects, and is herself a subject of “Corpo Montanha.”
“I perceive the erotic more than the sensual. Just as an example: indigenous people do not look at the River, they are the River. They have an integrated relationship with Nature. Because Eros is the pulse of life, it is nature. Thus, nudity becomes natural.”
“I paint slowly and relate each brushstroke to the flow of my routine and the simplest things in my daily life, such as tending to my garden and cooking. So each painting carries this energy of joy that I feel when doing the simplest things in life. But there is one piece in particular that I painted and even put on the wall of my living room: ‘Corpo Montanha’ of a waterfall.”
One cannot help but notice how it resembles a female vulva, pulsating and engorged with life. It is not my own sad mind reading into too much it; Catarina herself says: “This is my favorite piece so far, because in it, I feel that I am fully realizing my feminine energy, enjoying existence with pleasure. This painting speaks about the feminine connected to the sacred and about the ecstasy that a woman finds when she realizes her strength.”
She further told me: “This series is not finished yet, as I am slowly painting. I still need to produce a few more landscapes before I feel I have completed the series and think about exhibiting them. I would love to have the first exhibition in Asia and then bring it to Brazil.”
Catarina paints with India ink, watercolor, coffee, acrylic diluted with lots of water, and dry pastels. As a contemporary artist, she feels comfortable combining different media than the traditional ones in Chinese painting. So far, all of the paintings she has done has been on paper, but she would quite like to try silk.
“What I am most proud of in the ‘Corpo Montanha’ series is the possibility of integrating multiple memories through a landscape painting,” she says.
“My great interest as an artist is this ancestral investigation, which began with my own ancestry and the search to understand and give more meaning to my identity. But, when we seek to investigate more about who we are through this ancestral rescue, we dig deep into the earth to our roots—and we keep digging until we reach a silent space, which is the origin.”
That is what the waterfall vulva represents: where we come from, our Erotic Mother, the origin which we primally know, and to which we long to return, somehow. “The origin is the mystery that unites us. As an artist, I feel motivated to learn more about other people’s ancestral memories. I enjoy the diversity of cultures. I spent many years creating Sensitive Calligraphies on bodies, driven by this need to connect with others and their way of perceiving the world.”
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Embodied: “Sensitive Calligraphy” as Physical Painting, with Catarina Gushiken
