Interview with Marcela da Terra, Part 1
By Nina Purton
Biodesign might be the future — but it’s also the past, quietly waiting for us to dig a little deeper. In a world racing toward lab-grown everything and high-tech green solutions, perhaps slowing down and looking beneath our feet to remember what we left behind could help us move forward.
This is what my thoughts kept circling back to after spending an afternoon with Marcela da Terra, an artist and oceanographer whose artistic name — meaning “from the Earth” — reflects a practice deeply grounded in our soils. Her work with natural pigments goes beyond aesthetics, blending art, ecology, and community engagement in ways that challenge conventional boundaries between disciplines. Rather than simply working with soil, she enters into a dialogue with it — listening, learning, and translating its colours into collective expressions of memory and identity.
The Journey: from oceanography to soil
Marcela’s journey into natural pigments started as far from the art world as you can go. While studying oceanography at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), she became increasingly interested in how local knowledge shaped interactions with the environment. She was particularly drawn to people who lived in close relationship with natural ecosystems. “I realised that those who better understood those environments were the people who where there everyday, coexisting with it, the fisherman,” She told me.
This curiosity led her to work with coastal communities in Paraná and eventually to a 15-day canoe expedition guided by Renato Caiçara — a respected resident of Ilha das Peças in the region of the Paranaguá Bay and a custodian of caiçara heritage. The caiçaras are traditional communities found along Brazil’s coastal regions, with a culture rooted in artisanal fishing, agriculture, and a close relationship with the Atlantic Forest. Blending Indigenous, African, and Portuguese influences, their knowledge systems are deeply tied to the rhythms of land and sea.
During the trip, Marcela paddled through estuaries and forest-lined shores, experiencing life as it unfolded in these communities — from fishing and food preparation to moments of storytelling and sharing. On one day of the expedition, while bathing in a river, Renato handed her a lump of clay from the riverbed. As she split it open, something unexpected caught her eye. “The moment I split the lump of clay, I found multiple layers of colourful clay… there was a rainbow inside.”
That moment by the river was more than a fleeting curiosity — it quietly marked a turning point. “The colours were always there, but that was the moment I realised it,” she told me. “There was something magical about this story. But, I had no idea, at the time, the reverberation this would have in my life.”
She carefully tucked away the lump of clay and took it back home, in Minas Gerais. A decade later, Marcela’s soil-based paints have turned into a collaborative movement — equal parts art, science, and ancestral memory.
Marcela’s work reminds me that sustainability isn’t only about numbers or new tech — it’s about restoring relationships. To the land. To our bodies. And to the stories we’ve nearly forgotten. Here’s why.
Painting with Ancestry
Marcela’s deeper dive into pigments began back in Minas Gerais, after that pivotal moment on the riverbank. She returned home with the lump of clay still in her bag, dried it out, and carefully began scraping apart the layers of colour she had discovered. She described it like cracking open a memory — pink, yellow, purple, white — each colour revealing itself gradually, changing as they dried. Curious and excited, she phoned her mother, an artist who had long taught painting classes at home since Marcela’s childhood. Her mother told her that she could make paint from the soil – so the two got knee-deep into the earth.
Together, they began testing small-batch formulations with materials sourced around their native region. “We collected 11 different tonalities in a single day just from the surrounding region. Minas is very rich in that sense. That’s why it’s called Minas Gerais — General Mines,” Marcela said. What began as a personal adventure quickly became a deeper investigation — a mix of artistic exploration and environmental reflection.
This wealth of natural colour became both inspiration and guide. The act of collecting, grinding, and mixing soil revealed an entirely different creative rhythm that brought her closer to nature’s cycles — one Marcela would come to describe as ‘geological.’ “My processes are geological,” she told me. “It has to be done in layers. It’s a very slow process.”
Eventually, she encountered Cores da Terra (Colours of the Earth) project at the Federal University of Viçosa — a long-running initiative that teaches communities how to make their own paints using local soils. The project gave structure to what she had already begun to discover on her own: that natural pigments could be tools for both ecological responsibility and community empowerment.
This realisation allowed Marcela’s work to grow beyond personal practice. Her first workshop took place at the university campus where she studied oceanography — a place she described as “pale,” with no art and only two courses on offer: Oceanography and Aquaculture Engineering. Bringing pigments into that space was both symbolic and transformative. It marked the beginning of her journey bridging science and art through soil.
From there, she began offering workshops that weren’t just about learning a technique — they were about reclaiming knowledge, connecting with territory, and sharing stories. In many places she worked (mostly rural), the collective murals that emerged from these workshops were the first public artworks ever created by the community. For Marcela, they were more than murals. They were acts of local visibility — of people, of colour, and of place.
Earth as Curriculum
Among all of Marcela’s projects, the collective mural remains her favourite format. “You’re doing everything together — from observation to collection, preparation to painting,” she told me. “It’s not just about connecting with the planet, it’s about connecting with other people.”
This collaborative approach found a powerful expression in a school project coordinated through SESC (Social Service of Commerce) in the rural community of Barra Grande, Paraty. The school welcomes students from over fifteen neighbouring communities, including Indigenous, quilombola, fishing, and farming families. With the help of local teachers, Marcela designed an interdisciplinary project that integrated the pigments into the school curriculum. The chemistry teacher explored geochemical reactions through soil layers, while the arts teacher explored elements of visual expression through the earth’s colours, for example.
One of the most impactful moments came with the involvement of Mrs. Niede — a community elder and prominent leader in the struggle for land rights. Her activism dates back to the construction of the Rio-Santos highway that opened Paraty to mass tourism in the 1970s. This development drastically changed the region’s social fabric, bringing an influx of outsiders, real estate speculation, and increasing pressure on traditional communities. Many families, lacking formal land titles despite generations of occupation and a healthy, productive relationship with the land, faced threats of displacement.
In response, Mrs. Niede helped organise a movement that physically blocked the highway — a direct act of resistance that ultimately led to the community securing legal land rights through INCRA, Brazil’s national land reform agency. “Her participation was very special because she is living history and living memory,” Marcela said. The stories she told the youth at school were ‘their stories’ — the students recognised them as part of their family stories.
Beyond a stunning piece of art, the mural she developed with the students was a vehicle for connection — with the soil, with each other, and with a shared history often pushed to the margins.
To be continued in Part 2: Recipes for Reconnection — The Collective Practice of Earth Pigments
About the Author
As a sustainability, innovative materials and well-being writer, Nina Purton is an avid investigator of all things circular. She is set on researching behavioural patterns, pioneering materials and initiatives that are revolutionising the way we produce, consume, and relate to other human beings and the natural environment.
You can find out more about her on her LinkedIn profile and website.