Art is the heart of Usina de Arte's socioeconomic development project. It is the driving energy that brings the community together in a movement that transforms the territory, ways of seeing, and above all, people.

At the Usina, the relationship with art begins long before a work takes its place in the park. In many cases, it begins when the artist arrives to get to know the place. They walk through the village, learn the history of the old mill, observe the landscape, talk with the people who live here, and seek to understand the marks, conflicts, memories, and possibilities of this territory.

It is from this immersion that the proposal for an installation is born, one that will occupy an area of the Usina. The process of making the work, almost always carried out right here, also becomes a space for encounter. As the work takes shape, conversations, questions, and exchanges arise about the artist's thinking, their choices, and the way the piece will fit into the landscape.

This process brings art closer to people. It brings creation within reach and turns what might seem distant or inaccessible into a shared experience. Curiosity awakens, the desire to experiment emerges, and new possibilities begin to be imagined. It is no coincidence that two artists from the community itself already have works in the Art and Botanical Park.

Even when a work is acquired or donated and arrives at the Usina after being conceived in another context, it does not remain the same. Installed in rural Pernambuco, in a territory historically shaped by sugarcane monoculture, it forges new relationships with the landscape, with history, and with those who look at it. The place transforms the work, too.

An installation does not offer answers. It opens paths. Before a sculpture, there is no right or wrong, nor a single possible reading. Each gaze brings its own interpretation, and different interpretations coexist without hierarchy. This seemingly simple exercise has a rare power: it dissolves rigid oppositions, disarms binary thinking, and teaches us to live with doubt and difference. It is an experience of freedom.

Here, this experience happens in the open air and is part of everyday life. Art is on the way home, on the walk to school, in the garden people pass through every day. Living alongside the works over time gradually changes the way residents see the place where they live and what that place might become.

Taking part in this process also creates a sense of belonging. When people follow the making of a work, talk with the artist, recognize their own community in the process, or realize that their experiences and ways of seeing also have value, something shifts: self-esteem grows, the bond with the territory grows stronger, and so does the sense that it is possible to take part in building new futures.

It is in this shift of perspective that all development begins: when what once seemed impossible to imagine becomes part of everyday life; when creativity is no longer the privilege of a few and becomes a shared experience; when a community begins to recognize, in the place where it lives, not only the history it inherited but also the stories it can still build.

By transforming the way people perceive the world, art also expands the possibilities of the future.