Dicksonia sellowiana

Plants from Rio de Janeiro and Ze Carioca, the Disney character created to represent Rio de Janeiro and the city's culture, are blended by using 2 distinguishing languages: the scientific and the pop. This inversion of visual languages, which annul each other, reflect an unsettled world in which unnatural and timeless species are created floating on the background of the paper.
The seduction of the work disguises temporarily the corruption of having endangered Rio de Janeiro plants turned into Americanized mutations. A powerful institution such as Disney represents in the work the exploiting forces that take us back to the history of Brazilian colonialism.
The work plays with the eye of the viewer, creating uncertainty and exploring the boundaries between fantasy and reality, unveiling the sinister side of Disney sugar coated package which is able to subdue Brazilian culture and roots.
The believability of the work, however momentary, is more than a matter of execution; it is also a way of looking at things that appeal to and engage in a twisted globalized universe, which invites the viewer to use their own experiences to interpret the work.