I liked smoking. It was a powerful source of reverie. I had to stop doing it because, added to the ferocious arthritis, the breathing difficulties were too heavy a burden for my old body. So I gave myself over to ancestral needlework, embroidery and so on, which I abhorred as a teenager because it seemed to me to reflect, stitch after stitch, the subordination of women...

What used to dissolve the world in thought through my nostrils is now the work of my hands. Radically amateurish, like my political conviction. Deeply linked to prayer, like poetic rebellion. It should be noted (those who know, will notice) that I don't know how to embroider.

This isn't my body, it's just an echo of my body in endless traces, incapable of being wiped clean. Elvira Leite, master of the masters who doubt the masters - by and for whom this exhibition of rags is - understands, I think, perfectly what I mean. Haloed by her biblical hair, she was my teacher at the age of ten. I owe her a lot of my love of drawing. And also the desire for the arts to be freely practiced by all, so that humanity can be freed from slave labor. — Regina Guimarães