Mateus Nunes, researcher, curator, writer, and post-doctoral
researcher at the University of São Paulo, the Getty Foundation, and professor at MASP, writes a critical text about Normando's "collection : collections".

There are many collections about the Amazon, but few are made by Amazonians. The immense region, densely explored since the European invasion, fetishized to the present day, provokes us to rethink the act of collecting based on other matrices of thought. A rigorous inventory is of little interest, imprisoning collected objects in non-use, in a distancing from touch by ineffective patrimonialization processes. Indigenous peoples, riverine communities, quilombolas, and traditional extractivists have been teaching us for centuries that collection is sharing, use, and collective practice. It is the effervescence of wide warm rivers whose other bank is unseen, it is a flock of birds of all colors crossing torrential rains, it is a symphony of songs chanted by majestic Victoria amazonica bathed in the midday sun. Normando, in its new collection dedicated to collecting itself, revisits the concept with feet firmly planted in Amazonian soil, promoting the exchange of ideas, materials, and transgenerational and transcultural knowledge.

As a starting point in a stellar expansion, the muiraquitã is centered, a talisman-entity of the Tapajós and Konduri indigenous peoples of the Lower Amazon which, in colored stone, simulates amphibians and reptiles, especially toads and frogs. Like the patuá, an amulet of African origin, the muiraquitã is a symbol of power and protection, connected to a matriarchal production and sometimes placed as an ornament on the body.