Constellations and Gaps
Bienal de Fotografia de Vila Franca de Xira - BF20
‘FotoUtopia: Construções Imaginárias’ - Group show including works by Ana Linhares, Estefanía Landesmann, Pedro Valdez Cardoso and São Trindade, curated by Sandra Vieira Jürgens - Bienal de Fotografia de Vila Franca de Xira - BF20, Vila Franca de Xira.
Ana Linhares’ artistic project combines images and documents in an installation indebted to the contemporary conception of archival practice that challenges the canonical organisation and cataloguing standards. Requiring the presence of an assembly table, built from the combination of visual materials of various origins and natures, the artist highlights the diversity, complexity and multiplicity of the selection of images in detriment of the uniformity, simplicity and formal order priviledge in the traditional forms of history construction. Departing from the evidence that the archive is never neutral, Ana Linhares raises the possibility of questioning established narratives and the emergence of a future-oriented archive, made up of alternative readings of an ever-complex reality. Viewed as an experimental and research work, it also highlights the presence and the way communication technologies and digital tools have transformed and radically affect notion and experience of the archive.
Table for Thought: How to tell the story of a gap? / Remontage, 2021; Assembly table / Set of research elements: digital printing on paper, lambda printing, clay objects, wood pieces with acrylic paint, 84 x 96 x 127 cm Cabinet of Constellations : How to tell the story of a gap?, 2019; Digital printing on canvas, 80 x 120 cm.
Photo credtits João Neves©