Memory is disputed territory.

Artists Mayara Ferrão and Tadáskía affirm their history and identity by enacting images that build new ties and family albums.

Vera Chaves Barcellos transforms skin into landscape, while suggesting both physical existence and ways of escape, while Hélène Amouzou makes self-portraits to fight erasure. Even in the face of abandonment, the negatives rescued by Lagos Studio Archives insist on celebrating the beauty to be found in studio portraits.

With oil paint, Caio Pacela fixes scenes that multiply rapidly, like internet memes and spiritual cults. Mystery and transcendence also emanate from Fernell Franco’s photographs of street markets in Colombia, or from Maya Goded’s journey through the American continent in search of female resistance.

A resilient life is the example of Nair Benedicto, who reviews five decades of photography in an interview that is also a lesson about Brazil.

Rescued, dreamed, painted or printed, the images are the stones of history which line our path to the past and the future.

 

Thyago Nogueira, Rony Maltz, Elisa von Randow

 

Cover and back cover:
Álbum de desesquecimentos [Album of Deforgetfulness, 2024], by Mayara Ferrão.