Português
From 2pm to 7pm
Transmigração, an OtherNetwork project, curated by Beta-Local in collaboration with Pivô.
It all started with a conversation. During our first visit to Salvador as a collective, we were told a story at the Casa do Boulevard about festive gatherings held there in the 1960s. At those events, a collective soup was prepared – one that, according to those who lived it, didn’t just feed bodies but helped hold together a spirit of experimentation that contributed to what would become the cultural imaginary of Tropicália.
That moment became, for us, the base broth of this idea. Not as a historical record, but as a shared experience that sparked questions: What happens when a project is cooked slowly, in company, from what is remembered and imagined together? From there, Transmigração emerged – not as a traditional exhibition, but as a platform shaped by gestures of listening, movement, and collective making, connecting memory, territory, and presence across Salvador, anchored at the Casa do Boulevard.
In Puerto Rico, artist Jochi Melero, also known as the “Soup Wizard,” prepared a caldo santo, shared among many. The pot used for that ritual was later transformed into a pinhole camera, with which Melero traveled across the island capturing images. What was once a cooking vessel became a device for seeing – a container of light, memory, and transformation. This cauldron-camera is now part of the exhibition as sculpture and visual archive.
In Salvador, the public preparation of the Sopa de Rumores begins at the Feira de São Joaquim, where ingredients and utensils are gathered. The cooking is accompanied by a sonic invocation by Mima, who performs wearing a garment designed by William Murphy, later displayed as a textile sculpture, tracing the transition between body, voice, and object.
The project expands through contributions by Michael Linares and Fabián Vélez, who present a phytoacoustic sound installation translating the electrical signals of plants into sound, and by Pablo Guardiola, whose photographic installation centers on Caribbean flora and the act of observing through archival image-making. The tools and materials used—spoons, cloths, pots, textiles—are preserved as activated artifacts, bearing the traces of use and shared experience.
Here, to curate is to summon memory. Only the cauldron is “cured” in both the ritual and conceptual sense. The relationships among objects reveal a network where function, symbolism, and presence overlap.
Transmigração is not a static exhibition, but a living framework. Transmigração operates as a curatorial methodology: a principle of transformation and resonance that proposes new ways of inhabiting bodies, languages, memories, and territories – still cooking, still becoming.
Jochi Melero, photographer and cook, is recognized for a body of work that began in the 1970s, marked by iconic portraits of figures such as Benicio Del Toro and Silvio Rodríguez, and a singular sensitivity for capturing the world around him. Also known as the soup magician, he brings to Transmigração a speculative culinary practice rooted in Afro-Caribbean traditions, botany, and domestic alchemy. In this project, one of his cauldrons has been transformed into a pinhole camera with which he has captured images that oscillate between the ritual and the sensorial; another cauldron will be activated through the preparation of Sopa de rumores, a culinary spell that will enchant the object and turn it into a new piece. In this way, image, nourishment, and object become entangled in an affective archaeology where the material, the spiritual, and the symbolic coexist in a single gesture.
Fabián Vélez is a sound artist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist who has been active since the 1990s in Puerto Rico’s experimental and independent music scene. His practice spans modular synthesis, analog tape, and musique concrète, explored through both sonic and sculptural formats. In Transmigração, he collaborates in the live performance of La Caída del Alfiler (2025), a work by Michael Linares created using electrodes connected to living plants. His participation activates a sensitive ecology between the biological, the electronic, and the spiritual.
Michael D. Linares Vázquez is a visual artist, curator, and co-director of Beta-Local, whose work explores the symbolic power of objects and their potential to activate new forms of perception. His practice has been presented at venues such as LACMA, the São Paulo Biennial, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, and Art in General. In Transmigração, his contribution unfolds through site-sensitive interventions that combine performance, drawing, and assemblage, functioning as a connective infrastructure within the exhibition. His piece La caída del alfiler proposes a sensory and affective form of communication between humans and plants.
Pablo Guardiola is an artist, curator, and co-director of Beta-Local whose practice spans sculpture, photography, and writing. His work examines how narratives are constructed and perceived, and has been exhibited in spaces such as Romer Young Gallery, El Lobi, Km 0.2, and the San Francisco Arts Commission. In Transmigração, he presents an installation of images of trees and plants from dry and humid forests of the Caribbean, arranged in dialogue with the environment of Salvador de Bahía. These photographs act as vegetal presences that cross geographies, expanding through space as a constellation of memory and landscape.
Yarimir Cabán Reyes is a singer-songwriter, composer, and creator of the musical persona MIMA, active since the 1990s and known for a hybrid repertoire that weaves together plena, reggae, bachata, dub, and jíbaro popular music. With a distinctive voice and sharp lyricism, they have released two albums —Mima (2005) and El pozo (2011)— and collaborated with ÌFÉ, Rita Indiana, Villano Antillano, and Alegría Rampante, among others. In this project, their participation unfolds as a sensitive invocation of bodies, memories, histories, and territories through a singular performance. MIMA transforms singing into a practice of expanded listening, embodied archiving, and transformative communion.
William Murphy is a fashion designer with over a decade of experience, whose practice celebrates Black, queer, and Latinx cultures through garments infused with technique, memory, and identity. Trained by Carlota Alfaro and Lisa Thon, he has collaborated with artists such as Villano Antillano, Elvis Crespo, and Alyssa Hunter, using fashion as a poetic language and a tool for social transformation.
In the Transmigração project, he designs the garment worn by MIMA during a sonic invocation conceived specifically for the occasion. After the performance, the piece remains in the exhibition space as a sculpture, tracing a sensitive transition between body, object, and territory
Photos: Manuela Cavadas