Soil as Material and Poetics

The use of soil as an element in the visual arts is nothing new. Since prehistoric cave paintings, thousands of years ago, soil has served as pigment, support, and witness to humanity’s relationship with the world. Yet, while in the caves it was an instrument of record and ritual, in contemporary art it reemerges as a pictorial, critical, poetic, and political language — a way to reestablish bonds with the planet in times of exhaustion. It is from the soil itself, as element and presence, that artists such as Marlene Almeida (Almeida & Dale and Marco Zero), Carla Santana (Quadra), and Tito Terapia (Galatea), as well as the artisanal paint manufacturer Joules & Joules, find matter and meaning for their creations.

Joules & Joules, founded by artists Bruno Dunley (Nara Roesler) and Rafael Carneiro (Luciana Brito), and now joined by Daniel Xavier, is one of the most distinctive experiences in the relationship between art and material. The group conducts extensive research on paint making and has developed a line of natural pigments, carrying out expeditions across Brazil in search of colored soils. Each sample is a fragment of territory and time — the result is a palette of ten distinct shades, the “Brazilian Natural Soils” line.

And the project goes beyond production: Joules is also a space for learning and exchange. At its headquarters, artists and researchers take part in courses and dialogues about the properties of pigments and the alchemy involved in transforming them into paint. Dunley and Carneiro travel to universities and studios in different regions, sharing knowledge that is both technical and ancestral. This practice is strengthened by the support of art materials technology consultant Caetano Ferrari, whose long-standing research on handmade paints has inspired generations. He is also responsible for building bridges with artists such as Marlene Almeida, who for decades has made the soil her main interlocutor.

Marlene Almeida’s work opened paths for other artists to recognize in soil not just a material, but a way of thinking

— Beatriz Almeida

Marlene is an artist, researcher, and philosopher. From a very young age, she has crossed the boundaries between politics, ecology, and art with the same naturalness with which she gathers handfuls of soil from the ground. A participant in the 36ª Bienal de São Paulo, she is an essential reference when it comes to natural pigments in Brazil. In her studio, she houses the “Museum of Brazilian Soils,” a living collection that brings together samples and records of decades of “listening” to the soil. For her, “the soil is neither a dead archive nor a mere collection site,” but a voice of struggle, testimony, and ancestry. Throughout her life, she traveled the country in search of different geological formations, accompanied by her son, the artist and geologist José Rufino, and her husband, engineer Antônio Augusto. It was by observing the layers of the Barreiras Formation — which stretches from the northern to the southeastern coast and crosses João Pessoa, her hometown — that Marlene began her journey. There, among the cliffs and the sea, she learned to perceive the soil as both body and memory. Her practice opened paths for other artists to recognize in the soil not just a material, but a way of thinking.

Among these artists is Carla Santana, who also takes soil as the starting point for an expanded poetics. In her practice, painting, performance, and sculpture intertwine as unfoldings of the same movement of displacement and listening. At SP-Arte Rotas 2025, she presented, together with Gilson Plano, at Galeria Quadra, works resulting from a journey through the geological territories of Minas Gerais — a kind of crossing in which the act of walking and collecting became part of the creative process. Carla began her research on natural pigments during a residency at Sertão Negro, in Goiás, organized by Dalton Paula (Cerrado and Martins&Montero), and since then she has built a relationship with the gathering and preparation of soil as pigment. More recently, she traveled through Morocco and Portugal, where she deepened her understanding of the presence of soil in public spaces and architectural constructions. In Marrakech, she observed how the color of the soil shapes urban architecture; in the Algarve, she encountered different tonalities in the landscape. Her investigation turns to the questions: where does soil manifest itself? To what extent is it culture, technology, and society? Each collected sample is also a territorial narrative.

This perception of continuity between place and color also runs through the work of Tito Terapia, an artist from São Paulo’s East Zone. “I saw that green pigment in Carla Santana’s work and thought: I wanted to find it,” he says. The desire to find a color, a specific shade of soil, reveals the affective and almost mystical dimension of this search. The artist also took part in SP-Arte Rotas with a solo presentation at Galatea gallery’s booth. Tito began his trajectory in pixação — an urban and collective gesture — which soon expanded into painting on canvas. Through his interactions with artists such as Rodrigo Andrade (Almeida & Dale) and Link Museu (Izabel Pinheiro), he began painting outdoors and researching natural pigments, creating paints from soils collected in his own neighborhood.

For Tito Terapia, collecting, grinding, and mixing soils is a way of resisting and preserving the memory of places that have disappeared

— Beatriz Almeida

At Ateliê da Rapa, together with Evandro Cesar and Link Museu, he produces paints from the soils of the city, especially from the East Zone. Each color carries fragments of a territory threatened by real estate speculation. Collecting, grinding, and mixing these soils is, for him, a form of resistance and a way to preserve the memory of places that have disappeared. Many of the sites where he gathered samples — such as soccer fields and public squares — have already been replaced by buildings; the colors thus become records of an extinct landscape — mineral testimonies of a recent time. Tito often says that he walks through the city with a watchful eye, ready to stop in the middle of the street whenever he sees a different kind of soil — a simple gesture that turns the urban everyday into an archaeological territory.

Between Marlene’s ancestral gesture, Joules’s artisanal alchemy, Carla’s geographic crossings, and Tito’s urban gaze, soil emerges as a common language. In all of them, there is the same intention of reconnection: it is not about a romantic return to nature, but about reestablishing a broken alliance. Art made with soil is, above all, a way of thinking about time and belonging — the deep time of geological formations and the urgent time of human struggles; the belonging to a territory and to the planet itself.

In the hands of these artists, soil is not raw material: it is body, history, and voice. Its colors — ochres, greens, browns — remind us that there is still ground beneath our feet, even when we forget to look at it. In times of crisis and exhaustion, these practices propose a pause, a breath, and a return to listening. To paint with soil, to dig it, grind it, and mix it — all of this becomes a way of remaining in the present and renewing the pact between the act of creation and the soil that sustains it.

Beatriz Almeida is a specialist in Museology, Collecting, and Curatorship, with research focused on accessible curating. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Communication, with a final project on graffiti, activism, and advertising. She is part of the art history study group led by Rodrigo Naves and participates in the painting reflection course taught by Paulo Pasta. For the past six years, she has worked in the fields of communication and design within the cultural sector, with experience in galleries, museums, and art collections. She is currently a Communications Specialist at SP-Arte.