I wanted a few days of silence. I was beginning to dismantle the family house, the one where my children grew up, and I had just opened Gran Mar, an important photographic exhibition that demanded many months of laboratory and production work. I felt a deep need to rest.

While viewing that exhibit together in July 2019, Geo Darder invited me to take shelter in Perla Blanca, Brazil. He wanted to try it out as a Copperbridge Foundation creation center, as a residency to invite artists to create. He described the place to me as a spot where nature is still wild, which it is, and a very simple, very simplistic cottage. And so it is. He spoke to me from a vision, from his experience. I listened to him from my yearning. To reach a house at street level was the first surprise, I imagined it by the sea... He opened his light blue door to me, Yemanyá.

A pair of mermaids and a gypsy girl share an altar with Yemanyá. I always liked them, not only because they walk around naked showing off their beautiful fish tails, but also because they seduce whenever they want and whomever they want, attracting the object of their desire to the depths of the ocean. It is not uncommon for this to happen. Mamacocha (Mother Ocean) seduced me first with seashells and seaweed, shore flowers, and drawings in the sand until she pushed me to follow the trail of the huireros, seaweed gatherers of the Southern Pacific until I became La Huira (The “Seaweedette”). appeared to me as my alter ego, I didn't know she was a mermaid until I ran into her face to face in an alley in Barranco, Lima. That is how they are; Yemanyá, Pincoya, perhaps Mamacocha and all the others, but they are also mothers and sorceresses, they surround their lovers with riches, and embrace them transforming them.

I entered Perla Blanca with the new moon and Uranus, the lord of surprises, crossing the heavens. Disquiet star signs for a journey without coordinates...

I did not understand a single word around me. Nothing was what I expected, but that is not unusual, the Venus in me falls in love for no reason with one particle of the universe, forgetting all the others. Not understanding the voices and words nor having directions to locate oneself can be very uncomfortable, however, such a scenario has the virtue of activating new senses in me and sharpening my perceptions. Perla Blanca brought a lot of pressure to bear on me at a time of major life changes and movements. At a time when I was looking to stop and be silent in order to dream new desires which to attract.I deeply believe in pleasure as a creative engine, as Einstein said: "creativity is intelligence having fun"... but its opposite is also a powerful catalyst. Today I know that the unease I experienced in Perla Blanca, six weeks before the awakening of Chile, was the premonition of a rupture that in less than six months became a planetary reality... Alone and tired, I was carried away by my monsters: a shipwreck mixed with a cocktail of unspeakable nature that, although beautiful and peaceful, was threatening and aggressive.

My main means of salvation were my cameras and setting limits around me, ensuring silence. I wanted to discover the territory by myself, from my own way of being, with no impositions.

Perla Blanca, the house, bears the colors of Yemanyá who came from Nigeria, just across the Atlantic. It is a sanctuary of syncretic deities, a beautiful altar of sacred images and objects charged with magic, live atmospheres. At night the palms and crickets sing, frogs and butterflies come in, who knows... maybe other animals I didn't get to see. Behind the light blue bars and in the company of the wind, I slept alone and shrouded under a single white sheet to defeat the mosquitoes and chase away the spirits that disturbed my dreams.

I fed myself fruits and sometimes some fish that Maria, a sweet mother who saw my fear and lovingly cradled me, would prepare for me. Very early in the mornings, a bath of flowers and cold water focused my intentions. At sunset, all candles in the house and altars were lit, and I gave in to my own wake meditating. Some of my expired Isabels, died in me during those rituals; Yemanyá, the sirens and the gypsy girl kept me company and ensured my transit when I almost went mad. The tropics have a trance-like effect on me: Cuba, Yucatán, Brazil... that lag, that beautiful discomfort of sun and humidity, of hot nights, moves me to a state of connection, far from the mind. Nothing more hallucinogenic than fasting and silence, it produces powerful visions and conjures the being that really inhabits our bodies... unmasked. The soul, as in a long exposure shot, presents itself. My photos attest to the fear and fascination, the pleasure and danger of playing alone on a distant shore: “Like butterflies, they never tire of fluttering their wings. The rustling of their leaves is music akin to crickets and cicadas... Even that innocent joy can be torn away in fury if we are not firmly rooted, flexible, but at one with the earth. Many coconut trees lie on the shore or at the bottom of the bar. Monumental, like dejected Moais, stripped of their magic, robbed of their power.”

I took pictures to hold on to this side of life. Two years later, I ask them and they whisper back to me that I was terrified of the collapse of our civilization. Nothing foreshadowed what was dawning, or I did not see it coming, but today I certainly know that my residence in Perla Blanca was a premonition of letting go of all ties, all pain, all darkness and to trust; waiting for what is new, dancing and singing until connected with the being we carry inside. Whatever happens... In dreams I saw how the Earth let herself be seduced layer by layer listening to my song to attract her to her own healing. Whatever happens, it will all be good.

Today leaving the darkroom with the last photo that completes this work, I know that this series speaks of my panic before the vertigo of casting off the moorings of the known world that, today we know, has already gone. We are sailing, there are still no known ports, sharpening our gaze and our skin to orient ourselves from the heart towards the stars. Everything is new and everything lays before us. Flowers for Yemayá!