The Museum A Casa do Objeto Brasileiro is pleased to present, as part of its 2025 exhibition season, the exhibition "Onde em sonho ela mora" (Where in a Dream She Lives)” by the São Paulo artist Cristiane Mohallem. Drawing inspiration from Fernando Pessoa's poem “Eros and Psyche,” the artist transforms experiences and memories into dreamlike images and landscapes. Traversing places from the park that is part of her daily life to a small village in distant Iceland, Cristiane presents to us, through embroidered tapestries and paintings, a world that at times seems strange and at other times feels extremely familiar. The act of embroidery harkens back to an ancient manual tradition, and in her work, Mohallem uses this gesture to intertwine shapes and colors, resulting in sumptuous trees, skies that touch the sea, or stones that alter the course of river waters. It is the line that guides visitors’ eyes to discover the path the artist follows. Through colorful threads sewn into fabric, her embroideries flirt with the boundary between the abstract and
the figurative; they are identifiable, yet they appear as images from a dream. According to Mohallem, this is an intuitive process and a work of listening, in which she listens to the image and materializes it in the form of embroidery.
Side by side with the embroidered works, paintings are presented that are closer to figurative representation. Unlike the textile works, on canvas, Cristiane presents human figures that could or could not inhabit dreamlike scenarios created by the artist.
We invite the public to step into the diverse worlds interwoven by Cristiane Mohallem in this exhibition and to discover places that could be part of our daily life or navigate through our dreams.
MARIANA LORENZI
Artistic Director
Museu A Casa do Objeto Brasileiro
And although obscure
All along the highway far
And false, approach he steadily ,
Along highway through wall
Comes to where in slumber she dwells,
Giddied by what would be,
His mind in distant air,
Raises his hand only to find ivy,
And realizes that he was himself
The Princess sleeping.
Fernando Pessoa
The embroideries, paintings, and drawings in this exhibition are images created from nature,
people, and houses that stood out to me and, for some reason, entered me.
The composition of this show began with the painting “Onde em Sonho Ela Mora” (Where
She Lives in a Dream). As I painted it, I remembered the poem “Eros and Psyche” by Fernando
Pessoa, which inspired the title of the exhibition. This poem is a metaphor for the road—a theme
that is dear to me, especially when it leads us to the best possible encounter: the one that fulfills us. I
also like this title because it gives me the impression that one must inhabit the place of dreams to be
able to capture and listen to the images.
The embroidered tapestry “Árvore Mãe” (Mother Tree) arouse from observing a large fig
tree located in a park I pass through almost every day. Its roots reach deep into the earth, and its
branches touch the sky.
“Raízes do Mangue” (Mangrove Roots) was inspired by a trip to Bahia, where I saw many
mangroves.
“Outono” was born during a period I spent on Long Island, in the United States, when I
discovered that autumn is fire.
Last year, when I was in Blonduós for an artistic residency, a small town with 900
inhabitants by the river and the sea in the north of Iceland, I didn’t know what the images of my
next works would be. After a few days contemplating nature, the river became a living presence
within me, leading me to the sea, which in turn, took me to the sky. In those days, I experienced the
encounter between the river and the sea, saw countless rainbows, stars, and the aurora borealis.
From these experiences, the embroidered tapestries “Encontro do Rio e do Mar” (Meeting of the
River and the Sea), one and two, and “Breath” emerged.
Back on Long Island, on the first day, I woke up at 4 a.m. due to the time difference. Wide
awake, I sat in front of the garden of the house where I was staying, waiting for the first rays of
light. It was then that I intuited the image of the tapestry “Breath.” While embroidering it, I thought
about the creative breath of the world. I also dreamed that the tree portrayed in this work was at the
center of the Hidden Earth.In my studio, embroideries and paintings coexist side by side, often being made
simultaneously. That’s why I enjoy presenting them together.
Recently, while organizing the studio, I placed the painting “Homem ao Azul” (Man to the
Blue) next to the tapestry “Pedra do Mar” (Stone of the Sea).”Immediately, I remembered the line
“Time grows over the stone” from the poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar” by Wallace Stevens. I
saw the man as time, and the stone as the eternal.
Finally, I added two small paintings of interior scenes of houses, with open windows and
doors through which sunlight penetrates, and two others of the exterior of houses under the sun.
These are images that emerge from trivial scenes in my daily life, but which enchant me with their
beauty and metaphysics.