PT
De dentro para fora (2025–2026) is a work that holds the memory of the body and of the territory in which it was shaped. Created from wild clay and raw quartz crystals found in the Kalunga Quilombola Community (Goiás), the sculpture incorporates gilding to evoke the natural geological association between quartz and gold. By bringing these elements together, the work reveals the fertility of matter and its capacity to store the memories of the earth, constituting itself as a living geological archive.
Shai (1992) is a visual artist who graduated from the Universidade Federal da Bahia. Her interdisciplinary practice investigates the unfolding of feminine memory and its affective repertoires in the body and in matter, using photoperformance and audiovisual media as supports for her fabulations, and sculpture as an extension of gesture. Her research focuses on ceramic sculpture incorporating quartz crystals and minerals, connecting embodied memory to the geological memory stored in the earth.
Nominated for the PIPA Prize 2026, she held her first solo exhibition Oráculo da Memória at Galeria Verve, São Paulo (2023), and at Goethe-Institut Bahia, Salvador (2024). Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at Galeria Le Manège (Dakar, Senegal, 2026), MAZ – Casa de Fotografia da Guiana Francesa (Cayenne, 2025), and Cinemateca Brasileira (São Paulo, 2025). She has participated in artistic residencies including Je suis un océan noir on Ngor Island (Dakar, 2026), Instituto Sacatar (Itaparica, 2025), and Sertão Negro (Goiânia, 2025). Her works are held in private collections and in the collections of Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (Rio de Janeiro) and Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo.