Pororoca is the book published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name by artist Cristina Lamas, presented at the Carmona e Costa Foundation and curated by Natxo Checa between October 2022 and March 2023. The word pororoca, derived from the Tupi language (poro’roka), is an onomatopoeia for a roar, a rupture — the sound of waters colliding and bursting forth. It names a phenomenon of immense waves that surge upriver, overturning boats and flooding the banks: a force where meeting becomes transformation.

The exhibition — and, in turn, this book — emerges from the time Cristina Lamas spent in the Amazon. What unfolds here is not a document, but a gaze: the artist’s way of seeing, sensing, and remembering that period through her work. The book opens with an invitation. On the cover, typography fills the entire surface, punctured by three cut-out “O”s that act as apertures, offering an immediate glimpse into the photographs taken during the artist’s journeys.

The first section is composed of these black-and-white images — a visual drift that becomes essential to understanding the roots of several works, and images that later resurface within the artist’s collages. This immersion through Lamas’s eyes is briefly interrupted by a pause: a slim insert carrying the opening texts by Marta Mestre and António Guerreiro.

This gesture returns at the end of the book, where small green paper inserts appear. Here, the artist gathers fragments of thought, quotations from thinkers who accompanied and guided her along the way: Ailton Krenak, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Bruno Latour, Clarice Lispector, Claudia Andujar, Davi Kopenawa, Déborah Danowsky, Donna Haraway, Eliane Brum, Euclides da Cunha, João Moreira Salles, Lucia Hussak van Velthem, Lúcio Flávio Pinto, Oswald de Andrade, Umusĩ Pãrõkumu, Vinciane Despret, among others. These voices form a constellation, resonating quietly alongside her own.

The book opens and closes with the artist’s reflections — her voice framing the experience. At its centre lie the works and exhibition views from the Carmona e Costa Foundation, held between two margins of thought, text, and image. Like a river in flood, Pororoca moves between edges, widening them as it passes.