“We need to ritualize our lives again”

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Visual artist, designer, poet, jeweler and multi-talented artist, Mana Bernades has just launched her first furniture collection for Tok Stok. The Rito e Afeto line is full of sensations and proposes a more poetic relationship with our daily lives.

1. Tell us a little about the partnership with Tok Stok. Is this your fourth line for the brand?

There were two collections, “Livro em Louças” and “Flutuantes” launched together in 2013. Now I am launching the collections “Rito” and “Afeto” and some complements from the first two lines. In “Rito”, I try to talk about the importance of rituals. I think that One of our great civilizational problems is that we go through life without ritualizing it. We eat a sandwich standing up, and that's our lunch. We don't ritualize our waking up, we don't ritualize our sleeping, nor our eating. This is a civilizational problem. Throughout village, whether it's an indigenous village or a village in a small town, people have a different way of living. I don't know, the bell rings and people stand up and look at the sky. I think we're losing that and we're losing a lot because of it. In a certain way, my objects have a behavioral commitment, which comes from the sensitivity of texture and poetry, and poetry that does not only come from words but also from form and from people feeling that it was designed to make them sensitive. . I call this line Rito because I hope people can ritualize their daily lives. My objects have this goal of generating a new behavioral experience. For example: when I talk about a fruit bowl that is a holder of roots, vegetables and fruits that It's a piece of furniture, I'm saying: '- pay attention, you don't need to keep everything in the fridge, things have their own time to ripen'.

2. How did you transition from art to fashion and design? What is it like to be a multi-platform artist with creations in different areas? And what is your creative process like?

This transition happens every day. Every day I turn on the fashion button, I turn off the art button. I turn off the fashion button and turn on a design button. But the origin of all this is the possibility of expanding the meaning of words. Expanding the meaning of words, that is my role as a poet and that is how I expand my poetry to the world of fashion, design, and the arts.

My first profession, my origin, is that of a jeweler – something I have done since I was a child. The greatest sense of making jewelry is to broaden the meaning of the word jewelry. Because jewelry in the dictionary is linked to hard metals and precious stones. And I I believe that jewelry has to do with something smaller and of greater value. And I want to work with this archetype of awareness that jewelry brings. From this idea of preciousness, this refinement that jewelry brings, is what constitutes the basis for my work. We are in the 21st century, a century that demands a lot of transformation and evolution, in relation to materials and processes, I bring this archetype of the preciousness of jewelry to the issue of human development. I develop jewelry made from an affective process with the world, with the people, with the artisans who make these jewels, with the materials that come from garbage, which come from industrial waste.

I brought this to a phrase I created for the jewelry packaging: the power of transformation is the jewel of the human being. I see the human being as a jewel. I don't make jewelry, I treat the human being as a jewel. And so I include another fourth profession is to work for human development. I have been promoting human and personal development for over 12 years throughout Brazil. I go to communities, to favelas, to places where these women meet, listening to the life story of each of these women. women.

I joke that I have four professions and now I'm going for the fifth. I'm a poet, a jeweler, I've been working in human development since I was 14 years old, I'm a designer and now I've become a cook. I decided to make all the food for Tok Sok.

3. This is your first time designing furniture. The two previous collections were accessories. What was that experience like? And how do you create the product mix?

Yes, this is the first time I design furniture. I spent 2 years developing this collection. It was a huge challenge. I still consider myself in process, I'm new in this field, I have a lot to study and evolve. That's why I haven't designed anything yet. pieces that have very complex ergonomics, such as a chair. I did a behavioral study. I created a fruit bowl, a screen, a wooden box to store treasures, boxes to store memories, affections. There is design, but there is no virtuosity. I made a basic, dry work that seeks to meet the needs of a public within a department store.

The composition of the product mix happens in two ways: it comes a little from my desire, from my impetus, with what comes from my soul. And it has to do, a little, with the demand of Tok Stok itself. They write to me saying who need a candlestick. And I often say that I need to make a wall vase.

4. How have your reflections materialized in your work as a designer?

I think my work has a very philosophical tone, I don't separate life from work. I don't want to separate life and work. My life and my work are one and the same. The Indians don't separate life from work. I think We have to make our work a celebration of our life and make our life a celebration of work.

I feel like a missionary. I think I have a mission to develop affective, loving, fair processes that create a creative economy, that create collective love. I have this, I like it and it does me good. My work involves a lot of relationships. I am a process designer and a relationship designer.

5. You come from a family of artists. What was it like growing up in this cultural melting pot?

My family influences only help me. There is something very beautiful about my family: I was raised to be free. I left home when I was 18, and I have always supported myself since I was young. My family has always valued autonomy. My father and mother raised us. to be autonomous and free. We had, and still have, a great deal of philosophical exchange. There is nothing I have said to them, to my father (who has already passed away) and to my mother, that they have not expressed more modern ideas. than mine.

I have a dialogue and a poetic exchange with my very rich mother. Sometimes I call her at 6 in the morning: '- Mom, listen, see what you think of this word, help me because I'm here composing a text'

My structure with my parents comes from the exercise of being free when thinking things, it comes from the most open and affectionate dimension. I am extremely grateful for having these teachers in the family and all my authorial development comes from this relationship. What hindered me a little it was the disorganization of the artists in the family. I had difficulty in this more formal place of father and mother. I lacked the basics that everyone has, which is perhaps a certain rigidity of schedule, of discipline, of having a more “cuddly” relationship, of having cuddle. I was always raised to be loose, free and hard-working. There is a good side, but there is a side that I missed. I went to seek this cuddle with an aunt, with a friend.

6. Tell us what it was like to live with some indigenous peoples and how they influenced you?

I have always had several Indians staying in our house, people from different nations. My grandfather, Mauricio Vinhas de Queiroz, was an anthropologist who lived with the Ticuna Indians. The Ticuna are a very large nation, from the upper Solimões River to Colombia. My mother still works with Indians. When I was 7 years old, I had the experience of living for two months with my father among the Pataxós, in the south of Bahia. It was there that I was inspired to become who I am today. . There I learned the dimension of creating from the potential of the surroundings. I saw there the beauty of the Indians creating all the objects they need in a very ritualized way. I brought all this legacy into my home, I brought it to myself, to the my life.