1977, Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Lives and works all over the world

Paulo da Silva, an old man born in Borun Nak (Indigenous territory in the Rio Doce Valley), Minas Gerais, is bewildered with time, extending his birth to the origins of the Atlantic Forest. He is constantly moving across land and water, he has swum clumsily and drank from the Figueirinha and other tributaries of the Watu (Rio Doce). He grew up around sprouts that flow into the Rio das Velhas and a spring in Morro do Palmital. He walked along it all the way to the point where it flows
into Rio São Francisco and, from the top of the headwater, he followed the banks of the river to find the estuary where it meets the Atlantic. Paulo is the son of Ana Gonçalves da Silva, daughter of Nazareth Cassiano de Jesus, a Borun woman who became a political prisoner in the Barbacena colony as of 1944. At a young age, he gradually started to insist in forgetting the year that he had been born, and made himself as old as the stone at the bottom of a dry river. For a long time, he
has been tripping over stones with pointed tips on days when dust fills the air; while other times, he slips into quagmires after the rain.

When he was young, he sold pieces of iron and other metals, mineral waste from the mining giant Vale and its associates. He sold avocados, lime, annatto, black beans, and other types of fruit that grew by rivers and basins. He ate little birds that flew over the Rio Grande and the forest that extends over, even when it is asleep, to the other side of the mountain. He ate fish and swam in the embanked waters of springs that flow from Curvelo, even when they were dry, to what is regarded as Jequitinhonha. And he did so furtively, as he still worked as a handyman for Mr. heir of old masters who forged papers to grab the ancient lands of Borun Nak and their relatives. He walked through Asia, America, and Africa. He shows handcrafts, words, dreams, and thoughts. He observes the world from the top of a hill over the territory of Luzia.