The 2013 Mercosul Biennial was amazing! Warm Porto Alegre lived up to the event’s 9^th edition title: Weather Permitting. If the title is seen as a question, the answer is yes. Seen as a statement, it was as coherent as possible. And, yet, seen as a condition, it justifies the incredible resulting experience. Going through the museums, institutions and spaces sheltering artworks and where performances took place, the thin line between art and nature was reinforced, delightfully confusing us as to where one starts and the other one ends.  The confluence of materials, methods, myths and rituals confirmed the promise of an environment intended to make you face natural resources in a new light, speculating about the bases that mark distinctions between discovery and invention.

Here I share one of the treasures of the Mercosul Biennial, for those who haven´t been able to experience it: Tradução da resina. Resins are secretions produced by plants, which have specific purposes and contents. They became potential materials used in the production of several consumption goods such as waxes and latex. Lucy Skaer used resin as raw material for 25-kilo precious stones. Celulose Irani factory produced the work by extracting resin from pine. The piece subverts industrial and cultural production logic. In this context, as it happens in many other works in the 9^th Mercosul Biennial, Skaer’s work explains how art poetically and excitingly “re”forms what nature produces.