Mechanic is a long-term photographic project that explores the entanglement of rural iconography, digital language, and symbolic displacement in southern Brazil. Initiated in 2018 in São Gabriel, my hometown in the pampa region, the work examines how cultural identities are constructed and contested within landscapes shaped by economic asymmetry, extractive legacies, and visual mythology.
Anchored in the figures of the horse and the “mechanical cow,” the project adopts a speculative documentary approach as a way to subvert dominant narratives of the rural. Horses appear digitally modified, scarred by signs of ownership and transformed through codes borrowed from glitch aesthetics and automotive tuning culture. Through this, I seek to challenge and reimagine the notion of the body as a machine within a deeply rooted local tradition.
The mechanical cow, a handcrafted training prop used in lassoing, becomes a mobile monument to both cultural persistence and the simulation of tradition. The project interrogates gaucho iconography through the lens of digital culture, proposing a critical reflection that extends beyond the local, inviting new ways of seeing how rural imagery is staged, fabricated, and consumed across diverse cultural contexts.
The work examines transitional zones where rural and urban elements intersect and dissolve into one another. My return to the city becomes a way to map these overlaps, not only in the landscape but also in the visual codes embedded in local practices. The modified horse and the mechanical cow function as symbols of this shift, tools for rethinking gaucho tradition through the lens of contemporary urban imagery.