Estatuto da divisão territorial

"This research started in 2011, during my various trips between Belo Horizonte and São João Del Rei. Coincidentally, it was then that I started moving to the countryside. In those trips, I started noticing subtle changes in the landscape. Many were due to the action of man, while others were due to time itself. I felt the need to speed up this process through direct interventions on the landscape, or through digital manipulation. I resumed using two mediums I had left aside for photography: drawing and sculpture. 

A curious fact is: I really enjoy driving. When I do so, I am able to detach myself and let my thoughts run looser; I create artworks, I problematize them, I seek solutions. I can calm my mind and experience a sort of meditation. This is how I get into the landscape of the region.

I am not sure if I am a good artist, but I do believe I am a good observer. 

I think a relationship with the affective geographical space (this landscape) overflows in the somewhat monotonous series I have been producing. My work points to a discussion of space, displacement and the transformation of natural landscape. There’s always a visual enchantment with landscape, be it urban or rural. I return to the site several times before I take the pictures. I find that returning is a way of assuming ownership and dominating the space. 

I believe the goal of my work is precisely to propose a confrontation between two mediums: the paradigm of urban chaos and the survival of nature – sometimes, silent; sometimes, noisy. Our coexistence with the natural environment often brings about feelings of strangeness in which we don’t believe in, or we doubt them. Doubt is an issue that instigates me all the time.

Some series deal with the relationship between humankind and nature. Sometimes, these instances clash in contemporary society as a result of a certain wonderment of man with regard to urban and rural/country life. In the face of the transformations of contemporary space, with these images, I try to show that there can be a form of mutual coexistence, which often manifests itself harmonically, and other times escapes our control. Like nature’s survival amidst urban chaos.

My parents are university professors, and I was lucky to be in an environment that was completely favourable to art making. Due to my background in drawing at the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), I realize the importance of all this influence in my thoughts and my upbringing. Today, I am much more connected to the fine arts than to photography itself. Drawing is the uniting thread of everything I do. It organizes my artistic and my everyday thinking." 

Pedro Motta in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (October 2013)