Body of Evidence by Cordeiro, Ana Paula - 2020

NY: Center for the Book Arts, 2020. Cordeiro, Ana Paula. Quarto. (40)ff. One of nine copies. A multimedia, journalistic response to the climate of white privilege and fragility surrounding and in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Ana Paula Cordeiro, an immigrant from Brazil, found herself perceived as an other, often with fearful consequences. To cope with and express her story, she bound together evidence of her path as an immigrant and a woman: diary entries; quotations from Rebecca Solnit, Emily Dickinson, William James, Agnes Martin, and Fernando Pessoa; and variously printed images of Northern Manhattan, Cordeiro's neighborhood and historically an immigrant sanctuary. The resulting compendium is a nonlinear narrative of questions without answers, tenuous but persistent hope, and the crooked balance of self-reliance with dependence on those who perhaps see others as a threat. A brave work, embodying the experience of immigration and xenophobia, especially towards those who are undocumented.

For unspecified but implied reasons of force majeure, only Cordeiro's first name is visible in the book. The colophon, itself a poetic testament, describes Cordeiro's artistic and emotional processes during its creation and states that it was "instigated by nationalism...by racism...by patriotism." It also bears the profound quotation from Georgious Boudalis, "Books and bodies were vulnerable and the fact that pains were taken to protect both books and bodies alludes to their power." Bound by the artist in her apartment during the pandemic, with covers of full leather lacunose, augmented with tree bark and mother-of-pearl. Shaped as an envelope with flaps open, the book is, by design, unable to stand on its feet. Housed in a black quarter-goatskin box. Very fine.