As Palavras Estão Todas do Lado de Dentro

​

Some things are defined by what they are not, and silence is one of them, indissociable from that which is missing. What it silences is more important than itself, that which is not said is what makes it, for it is defined by the power of the scream it is not.

​

When we are born girls, whether we become women or not, we are taught even before speaking, to be silent. Shut, sew and marry are feminine skills that are passed along from mother to daughter like the porcelain put out only to serve the guests - femininity is a preciousness to be seen. 

​

Speaking, making and running, on the other hand, are survival skills that we learn too young. We must figure out how to speak without being loud, making without bothering, and running away without being perceived. Letícia Feltrin was one of those silenced children and today she invites us to think about what we teach our girls.

​

“As Palavras Estão Todas do Lado de Dentro” (The Words Are All On The Inside) does not intend to give a voice to what needs to be said. Instead, it faces the weight not of that which stays inside, but of keeping it inside and silent. In these works we are not going to be hearing the cry of the girls that are abused, neither the bawling of the promised wives, nor the tears of the episiotomized mothers. What we hear here is the silence that they carry around. 

​

Letícia is a poet and knows that written word is silent enough to go unnoticed by the church and family that only ever sees the scars and bloody trails, and that’s why it is through the act of writing, perforating and tying up that the artist shows us what silence is made of. 

​

“What I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women’s silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die.” - Andrea Dworkin

​

Be it in the laps of our fathers or at the foot of the altar, Letícia Feltrin makes us listen to the melody of silence to think of what stays inside the girls, from the moment they are born until their death.
 

 

Giovana Macedo

2023