Priya Pereira
Amev Camilo Pereira
Mumbai, India
www.pixiebks.com
MOON
2024
3mm kappa board, 330 gsm coated black card, 250 gsm silver card, ‘waraq’ silver foil
8 5/8″ X 6 9/16″ X 1.5″
Artist Statement
A joint mother-son collaboration resulted in a book with three sections. Two parts black – night, one part silver – moon. Black text on black pages, silver text on silver pages, hidden, unhidden like the moon in the cloudy night sky… like the moon in the book.
The silvery effect of the moon was created using Waraq – an edible avatar of silver, beaten into fragile sheets, traditionally smeared on Indian sweets. This craft is mainly practiced by the Pannigars, a community originally hailing from Afghanistan, but settled for generations in Jaipur, Rajasthan India. For ‘Moon’, Waraq was sourced from an original Pannigar family who gave me the material and also taught me how to use it on the book.
‘Moon’ is a completely handmade book – hand-applied Waraq, hand-lettered and hand-bound. The body of the book is thick-set with thick pages, fat letters and globs of silver. Even the poem holds gravitas, in stark contrast to its light and luminous subject.
Amev Camilo Pereira, my younger son, wrote the poem after a month of living alone this February in his namesake grandfather’s village house in Goa, India.
Handling the book will leave you with bits of Waraq on your hands, a generous offering from the silver moon.