BELLA CARDIM

Soft Memories (2021)

Soft Memories begins with an object that has been in my family for generations: an antique Art Nouveau biscuit barrel that remained on my grandmother’s coffee table throughout my childhood, always filled with Bala Soft, a brightly colored Brazilian candy remembered by an entire generation.

Despite its name, Bala Soft was hard, dense, and almost impossible to chew. Its sweetness was inseparable from a sense of danger, and the candy was eventually removed from the market after being associated with fatal choking incidents. What remains in my memory is this contradiction between a familiar gesture of care and an object that could become impossible to swallow.

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In the work, the original candies are recreated through wet felting. Wool gives them the appearance of softness, yet its fibrous and slightly abrasive texture resists the mouth and the body. The felted candy looks comforting and harmless, but it cannot be eaten. It becomes simultaneously soft and rough, inviting and repellent.

Wrapped in cellophane and placed inside the inherited biscuit barrel, the candies return to the domestic setting from which the memory emerged. The object carries the intimacy of my grandmother’s home, the ritual of offering sweets to visitors, and the persistence of memories preserved through familiar objects.

Soft Memories explores the tension between sweetness and danger, comfort and aversion, affection and unease. The work reflects on how family memories are passed down through objects and gestures, and how what appears tender and comforting may also carry textures that are difficult to digest.