A Ceifeira: A Symbol of Resistance

2025 A Ceifeira Gouache, colored pencils and digital collage 297 mm x 420 mm “A moment. A field worker sits in the yellow fields, between furrows of earth and silence. She takes a deep breath in the moment between efforts that seem endless. But this isn’t just a break. It’s a symbol, heavy with memory. It’s a body holding space with quiet strength, it’s hands worn from labour, it’s a gaze of struggle and a womb of resistance. At least that’s what I try to capture. Still, there are layers that won’t fit in a single line: the hunger that lasted decades, the violence turned routine, the spilled blood, the weight of a system built to silence and exploit. Women like her worked and fought to the edge of exhaustion and even then, so many remain outside the books, the tributes, the memory. This is more than a portrait. It’s an act of resistance against forgetting. It’s a way of saying: there were voices, there was strength, there was struggle. It’s a way of caring for the seed that April left us.”