Geburtsurkunde

2022
4K one-channel video, colour, sound. 7’30’’

Geburtsurkunde reacts to the turbulent young history of Mattos’ home country of Brazil: from major international events to the associated popular uprising, the subsequent impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the subsequent takeover by right-wing extremist forces.

In 2018, the major fire at the most important museum in Brazilian history, the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, became emblematic. A symbol of a country that neglects its past and tries to overcome its own fears for the future with cheap nationalism. But the fires increase over the years and also become a symbol of the ecological destruction of Brazilian forests.

By burning his original birth certificate, Mattos is not renouncing his own origins, but the counterfeit mind of national pride that perpetuates injustice and represses its own traumas.