Since moving to Brazil, Elsa Leydier lives by the Atlantic Forest, which stretches out along the Brazilian coastline over thousands of kilometres, becoming inseparable from the Atlantic Ocean into which it flows. 

It is a forest which is fast disappearing to absolute indifference, especially compared to the emotion triggered by the Amazon Forest. Only 8% of the surface which covered Brazil when the Portuguese invaded, remains. 

Its destruction has been driven by capitalism. The Porto Sul project in particular affects the artist, possibly because it is right near her home. The construction of this industrial port is currently underway, destroying acres of forest and seabed (on the migration path of whales) under our very eyes. Thousands of local jobs and livelihoods are being threatened – fisherman, the Landless Workers’ Movement, Quilombola communities and other inhabitants of the region.

'Luto' in Portuguese means mourning. Mourning the loss of the forest, its teeming life and wild, creative biodiversity dying a slow death under the muted sound of rampant capitalism.
 

In this work, pages from decrees and deforestation authorizations that led to the construction of Porto Sul are affixed to photographs of Mata Atlântica and the Ocean. The very ordinary A4 sheets of paper appear as anomalies, colonizing a luxuriant environment they don't belong to, and that they, therefore, hid, destroy, erase.

Like an echo of the widespread feminist street collages which have sprung up in recent years, black painted letters have changed 'luto' into 'luta'. If a simple sheet of A4 can trigger the destruction of a forest and entire ecosystems, it can also be the pillar for other fights, for social justice and climate change which will save lives and forests. Luta means fight. Like a reminder that resistance can rise from any wound. Now, more than ever, we have to grab the tools in our possession – often “the master’s tools” - to subvert them and fight in our own way. By transforming the meaning of the word it covers, the A serves here as proof that we can muster the strength to fight, to rise up against injustice, from the core of a wound. 'Luto' has the potential to become 'luta'.

The images are printed on environmentally-friendly paper made from European hemp. The frames are made in China. Through these production choices, Elsa Leydier wanted to emphasise the idea that, even if we act with the best of intentions, we are all dependent on a system that draws its raw materials from Latin America and exploits cheap labour in Asia.

Like ecofeminism, LUTO/A calls for our current capitalist system to be questioned and deconstructed in its entirety — rather than acting on small isolated actions that merely patch it up, as a few pieces of tape would do to an entire structure in the process of collapsing.