The wound exposes the vulnerability of the body. It marks the point at which living matter breaks, revealing at once fragility and potency: the capacity to endure the impact of the world and to initiate processes of repair. In this sense, the wound is trauma, but also passage — an inscription of time and experience on the surface of the body.

Nas Feridas que Eu Alcanço was conceived during the artist’s return to Brazil after an artistic residency in Venice and studies in Environmental Humanities at Ca’ Foscari. The displacement between cultural and affective contexts — marked by the experience of being a foreigner, by generational and methodological frictions, and by a sense of rupture in continuity — forms the background of the work. At that moment, Analize Nicolini confronted the need to reorganize her own existence and reaffirm her position within the field of art. The work is part of a broader investigation in which the body, public space, and the relationships between individuals, species, and social systems operate as devices for reflecting on vulnerability, care, and collective responsibility.

In the performative action, the artist presents herself as an unidentified living being — a figure that may simultaneously represent human, animal, or symbolic entity. Wearing a red garment composed of a catsuit, facekini (facial mask), and cape made of biodegradable polyamide, her body is transformed into an expanded organism. The costume covers the body entirely, leaving visible only orifices and wounds. The red surface evokes blood and skin, while the orifices indicate fundamental zones of communication between interior and exterior — respiration, ingestion, excretion, and expression — shared by virtually all living beings.

The wounds indicate ruptures. They refer both to individual and collective traumas — marks that traverse individuals, species, and ecosystems. The body presented by the artist thus becomes a symbolic territory where personal experiences, social histories, and planetary processes intersect.

The central action of the performance consists of a simple and primitive gesture: licking her own wounds in a public square, like a dog. Observed in several animals as a way to relieve pain and stimulate healing, this gesture is appropriated by the artist as a symbolic image of care, regeneration, and self-listening, while simultaneously exposing the vulnerability of the body to the collective gaze.

The performance was carried out for the first time in public space at Praça Marechal Alberto Ferreira de Abreu, in front of the Hospital Geral de Curitiba — an institution administered by the Brazilian Army — on July 27, 2022. The presence of the artist dressed in red momentarily interrupts the normal rhythm of the space and introduces an unexpected image into everyday life, directly connected to the shared experience of bodily vulnerability and the search for healing.

During the action, the artist repeatedly states aloud the phrase “In the end, we will all lick ourselves.” The statement introduces a collective dimension into what appears to be an individual gesture, suggesting that there are wounds we cannot reach alone and that certain forms of healing require shared practices of care.

In this sense, the work operates simultaneously as warning and invitation: a warning of the fragility that traverses all living bodies and an invitation to an ethics of care toward oneself, others, and the world.

Within this operation remains a question that runs throughout the artist’s research: can art transform behaviors?
Nas Feridas que Eu Alcanço does not offer a conclusive answer, but rather creates an image capable of momentarily interrupting routine and opening a space for reflection in which this question continues to resonate.