Pequeno mapa do tempo Paula Siebra
Mendes Wood DM is pleased to present Pequeno mapa do tempo, Paula Siebra’s first exhibition at Casa Iramaia in São Paulo. Featuring small and medium-sized oil paintings on canvas, the exhibition conveys the artist’s perception and sensitivity toward time and the cycles of the seasons in Fortaleza, Ceará – the city where she was born, lives, and works. Drawing on a unique, regional logic, the works traverse periods of rain, celebration, wind, and drought, evoking memories, images, dreams, and sensations connected to her homeland.
In 2025, Paula Siebra completed a residency in Kyoto, Japan, which resulted in an exhibition and a publication dedicated to the Japanese summer. During this period, the artist deepened her engagement with Asian pictorial practices rooted in the contemplation of nature and explored haiku, brief three-line poems. The experience opened up new possibilities for her recent work, incorporating elements of poetry and offering a fresh perspective on what is familiar to her: Ceará.
Separando o feijão [Separating the beans] (2026) depicts an intimate and traditional moment related to the harvest, which takes place after the rainy season in Ceará. The painting features elements that engage with Japanese visual culture, such as the use of empty space, compositional freedom, and the elongated horizontal format, which departs from more common conventions. The work, like others in the exhibition, demonstrates how the artist incorporates references and techniques drawn from her experience in Japan to address aspects deeply connected to her place of origin.
Rejecting the conventions and seasonal terms of the Northern Hemisphere and proposing a new vocabulary for the passage of time, the exhibition is organized into seasons that are instead characterized by an affective and subjective sense of time. The journey begins with the rains that mark the start of the year in Ceará, continues through the festive season, including the June festivals – a traditional Brazilian folk celebration – passes through the windy season, which reaches great intensity in the second half of the year, and culminates in the drought characteristic of the end of the year.
Marking a moment of transformation, simultaneously an end and a beginning, the painting Flor de Mandacaru [Mandacaru flower] (2026) concludes the exhibition. The flower signals the transition between the dry season and rainy season, heralding, in the popular imagination, the arrival of the rains. The mandacaru, in turn, is one of the most emblematic symbols of Northeast Brazil and has become synonymous with resilience for blooming vigorously even in arid conditions.
Paula Siebra develops a unique visual index, built from field research and lived experiences both on the other side of the world and in her homeland. Through it, she addresses a universal question: the relationship with time and its cycles. In a context marked by the incessant circulation of images and an impending climate crisis, her work invites the viewer to slow down, engage in contemplation, and reconnect with the surrounding world, in an experience of direct and attentive presence.
