Schendel's 1972 'Toquinhos' consist of square and rectangular shapes made with Ecoline ink, alongside Letraset letters and punctuation marks. Schendel often worked with language and she viewed the symbol (or letter) as something ‘ordinary, devoid of emotion’. She included handwritten or painted words, floating letters, symbols and quoted text in her works. Having aspired to be a poet, her work has an undeniably poetic aspect to it. However, she felt unable to express herself entirely with words. She once said in an interview, ‘If I could speak or write, I think I would not paint or draw’. This serves as an insight into the experimental, searching way in which Schendel used language in her work and the subsequent textual dislocation exhibited in the Toquinhos.