This is the only photograph that remains of Maria Leonia Campos da Fonseca — and, interestingly, also the first one she ever took. As Alzheimer’s progressed, she herself tore apart the printed photographs from the family albums, gradually erasing her own story. What survived was this fragment. And from it, everything begins.
Before that, there was a whole life. In Flores, in the countryside of Pernambuco, between silences, hardships, and new beginnings, it was at the sewing machine that she found a way to carry on. Sewing was more than a craft — it was reconstruction. And it was there, by her side, that I, Marlu Fonseca, still a young boy and a curious grandson, began to learn. Among threads, fabrics, and small gestures, sewing also became our way of bonding, of presence, and of care.
At 18, with few prospects in a town of just over 20,000 people, I moved to São Paulo. I started at 25 de Março, where everything was movement, urgency, and adaptation. In 2020, with the hope of returning to my hometown, I decided to begin my first creations — not only as a creative exercise, but as a way to continue and to recover the memories of my grandmother, who was gradually drifting away from herself. It was at that moment that the first T-shirts were created, printed with her face — the same one in this photograph.
After a period of studies, research, and development, Leoniê returns in late 2024. Coincidence or not, on the very same day Maria Leonia Campos da Fonseca passed away.
Between encounters and disconnections, absences and continuities, what remains is what endures. Leoniê continues to exist as a living archive — an ongoing gesture of memory. Not only of Maria Leonia, but of all Leonias: women who resist, who rebuild, who find, in their own way, paths to remain.
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