With Oro Negro (Black Gold) , Poliana Lima returns to one of the big questions that has always been with her and, indeed, with all human beings at some point in their lives, which we ponder during critical moments of life and the creative process: Who am I?

‘I ask this question now from an intellectual space, although it is a question so visceral, so physical and the feeling of emptiness that has always been with me, which I have tried to give shape to in every piece that I have made, had to make each piece to keep maintaining this question and understanding a bit more each time. Through all of my works, I have progressively invented a silhouette, a story, a fiction that could support me in the emigration process here in Spain, in the process of being a woman outside of my country.’ Asking is piercing yourself, digging into your insides. And that is how during a research process in Vienna, in 2019, Poliana reached the word ‘oil’ in a type of conceptual mapping that contained words like the verb ‘unearth’ and the noun ‘resource’. With petroleum, the ideas converge not only of piercing and going to the centre, but also fuel, resource, something hidden and violent practiced against the earth to extract it.

The oil that Poliana Lima has found in this quest transforms her just like oil has transformed the world. The extraction of its black lineage encourages her to approach the piece like a solo in two bodies, like a road of transformation from one to the other, from the present to the past in order to understand the future.