Xaiure maaraesé xasaysu ndé (I came because I love you): from ashes to creation
From 22 November to 23 February 2026, the Lasar Segall Museum presents a new exhibition by contemporary artist Alessandra Rehder, who was born in Sao Paulo and developed her photographic practice at the SPEOS Institute in Paris. From early on, the artist has devoted herself to building images through experimentation, with a keen sensitivity to the relationship between nature, human existence, and photography itself. Her work spans several countries — including Mozambique, where, in 2021, she founded the EEC (Espaço Ecológico Cultural) in the small coastal village of Murrebue. There, she created a community space offering workshops in composting, permaculture, and agroforestry, encouraging food education practices and supporting the local economy. Rehder maintains an active artistic practice, participating in fairs and exhibitions in Brazil and abroad.
In one of the temporary exhibition rooms of the Lasar Segall Museum — originally the artist’s home and studio, and one of Brazil’s first modernist houses designed by the Russian-born architect Gregori Warchavchik, Segall’s relative by marriage — Rehder presents a small yet potent work. Curated by USP Professor Luiz Armando Bagolin, who also curated her 2023 exhibition at the Brasiliana Library, the show benefits not only from its intimate scale but also from the atmosphere it establishes. More than a group of remarkable pieces, it becomes an environment that sharpens the encounter.
As Bagolin explains in the opening text, the exhibition title comes from an Indigenous language — a variation of Guarani — and means “I came because I love you.” It is a declaration, but also a kind of commitment: “there is no love without listening, and no listening without a transformation of our gaze”. The forest asks for other modes of approach, revealing vital rhythms that persist despite exploitation and ongoing environmental and social crises. It is important to emphasize that Rehder does not claim the place of Indigenous voices, instead, she highlights the need to listen to them, recognizing their role as guardians of the forests, as Bagolin underscores.
Among the works on view is “Amazonian Immersion”, where thousands of leaves cut from a single photograph overlap, pinned delicately onto another image of Pará’s primary forest. The piece — the result of meticulous, manual labour — foregrounds gesture and invites visitors into close, immersive looking. Each cut leaf is unique, alluding to the complexity of nature, and the work offers a powerful counterpoint to the banalization of photography in a world where images slip past us by the second.
Another piece, “Time Written in Rings”, uses photographic cut-outs to reflect on the memory held in the inner body of trees — their grain and rings, which record time like a musical score, defined by staves, rhythm, tone, and tempo, shaping the organic totality of a composition.
The exhibition journey culminates with “Cuts That Tell”, an installation that is not photographic, but is centered on the gesture behind the act — composed of sheets that condense the cutting process present throughout Rehder’s practice. It becomes a visual excavation, in which the image unfolds in layers — like the veins of a tree trunk — revealing rhythms, fragments, and traces inscribed in matter.
In December, the Museu Lasar Segall offers a parallel programme, including activities and events with the artist herself, shared through the institution’s Instagram (@museu_lasar_segall). This exhibition reveals an artist in full stride, and, above all, urges us to confront an urgent theme for all of us: our relationship with nature. It invites us to slow down, to relearn how to observe, to look — and, without haste, remain before the works long enough to truly feel the questions Rehder brings with such sensitivity and depth.
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