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A BRUSH WITH LIGHTExhibition / Screening /Symposium / Workshops
Published 2010
Copyright © 2010 A Brush With Light
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from Celia Jackson
Design by Duncan Gravestock.Foreword by Celia Jackson & Humphry TrevelyanPrinted in UK by Sharman & Company Ltd and paper supplied by Sharman & Company Ltd.
Cover Image: ‘Hagakure II’ By Miguel Chikaoka 2010
And now the third generation is spreading its wings, with a diversity and fluency that reflects the effortlessnes of the contemporary means of communication. There is a sense that the combination of the material, artesanal approach to light and the image combines even more closely with the eclecticism of the digital and virtual. Memories communicated and re-ordered in bytes, recognising and respecting the revolutionary simplicity and openness of the pinhole camera, and exploring the new representation.
Fotoativa is a collective of photographers in the eastern Amazon that has been working together since 1982. They are based in the city of Belém in the state of Pará at the mouth of the Amazon, a declining seaport of nearly 2 million people, surrounded by intensive agrobusinesses, riverside and island communities, and further afield large tracts of rainforest. The city combines burgeoning high rise apartment blocks and large areas of 19th and early 20th century town housing, enriched with newly restored 18th and 19th century churches, municipal buildings, fine squares and parks, the clutter of riverside markets, the roar of buses, and the daily drumming of rain.
From its start, inspired by the radical ideas of Miguel Chikaoka, and the innovative work of photographers like Patrick Pardini and Elza Lima, Fotoativa has evoked a particular philosophy of the photographic image and its relationship to individual creativity and the community. The famous ‘oficinas’ (workshops) held in Fotoativa’s premises, and in communities in the city and countryside, encourage both novice and experienced artist to explore the fundamental properties of light, the creation of the frame as a function of the individual gaze (‘olhar’), and the individual’s response to their surroundings and culture. The photographers of Pará talk about the light of the great skies, the water, the forests, the communities that make their lives at the rivers edge, the city that merges with the communities, the sense of shared history in a region that is happy to feel separate from the larger Brazil to the south.
From the now iconic work of the first generation of Fotoativa that mapped in light the social and creative culture of a whole region, the second generation – Paula Sampaio, Flavia Mutran, Mariano Klautal, Walda Marques, Alfredo Bitar, Guy Veloso, Alexandre Sequeira and many others – in most cases introduced to photography through the collective action of Fotoativa - have pursued with extraordinary clarity the different routes and pathways that the pursuit of light might lead to. The migrant communities of the highways, the hidden histories and narratives of the city itself, the extravagant rituals of a people at one with their spirituality, synchretic and received, the human response to an overwhelming natural world of vegetation, the narratives of imagination and dream: this diversity of vision is held together by a common reference point, a shared learning and continuing discussion and debate.
FOTOATIVA: LIGHT AND LIGHTNESS
A BRUSH WITH LIGHTINTRODUCTION
One of my earliest memories of Newport is of a windy riverbank, tangled with long grass and brambles, near the old art college (as we called it) with its distinctive green dome, in Clarence Place. I was crouching in front ofa shoebox that I had fashioned into a pinhole camera with little more than black paper and tinfoil. As it was a grey morning the light was poor, and I had to wait a long time - nine minutes - to take my self-portrait. Good-natured men on their way to the Labour Exchange (long since demolished) asked questions and offered advice;a dog bumped my shoebox camera; the wind blew in gusts, bringing spatters of raindrops. The resultant picture was a revelation: my hair was a weird fuzzy mass (Eraserhead springs to mind) and my mouth was no more thana blur, for I had spoken to so many curious passers-by. The simplicity of my primitive camera belied the complexity of the image it produced; this was the beginning of my affair with photography, and with Newport itself.
A Brush with Light has always had at its heart the city and the inhabitants of Newport. What began as an almost desultory conversation about the joys of primitive technologies - particularly the use of the pinhole camera - in respect of photographic representation has developed, over the last 18 months, into an ambitious and multi-stranded project that draws together a disparate range of practitioners from Wales and from Belem in Para, Brazil. Their common ground is a preoccupation with the status of the photographic image and with the use of photography as a tool of philosophical enquiry. There is a rich history of photography in Newport (it was first taught here in 1906) and projects such as the Newport Survey have been influential in shaping how its inhabitants view the city. Belem, too, has a long and honourable tradition of photographic activity, especially in terms of participatory workshops and informal exhibitions based in both urban and rural communities.
An important element of A Brush with Light has been the programme of photography workshops led by Miguel Chikaoka, founder member of Fotoativa, that took place in a temporary darkroom at the Riverfront Theatre and Arts Centre. They involved a number of staff and student volunteers from the University who worked with members from Urban Circle, a youth organisation based in the city centre whose objectives are to engage, support and empower while offering an open access ‘safe space’. Subsequent workshops involved the refugee community of Newport in what, we hope, has proved a powerful bonding exercise. We are celebrating the achievements of all workshop participants by exhibiting their work in changing displays in and around the Riverfront that are highly visible and accessible to all. At the same time, we hope to communicate the idea of photography as something more than the ubiquitous mobile phone or digital camera images that relentlessly pervade everyday life. A camera may be as simple as a cardboard box with a hole at one end and a piece of paper at the other: the light does the rest.
NEWPORT: DRAWN WITH LIGHT
INTRODUCTION
A BRUSH WITH LIGHT
CONTRIBUTORS
A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
ALBERTO BITARBorn in Belém in 1970. Started his photographic practice in 1991 participating in workshops at Fotoativa. Has exhibited in collective and individual exhibitions, notably Solitude (1994) and Hecate (1997). Awarded special prize at the Salão Arte Pará
2003 for his video Doris, and in the same year a bursary to produce the video Enquanto Chove by the Instituto de Artes Pará. In 2005 he gained first prize for best video at the 2nd Belém Festival of Brazilian Cinema for his video Partida.
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participations in Belem, Pará from 1983 to the present, include ‘X Bienal de Havana/CUBA’ 2009; ‘Sangue Novo’, Museo Bispo de Rosario, São Paulo, 2008; Creative Residency, Centre Culturale Engramme, Quebec, Canada, 2007; Bienal Internacional de Liège, Belgium, 2006; ‘O Que e Normal’ FUNARTE/Brasilia, Brazil, 2006; ‘Une Certain Amazonie’, Paris 2005.
Born 1961, Belém-Pará. Graduate in Architecture at the UFPA, Belém, 1983. Lecturer at the Instituto de Ciencias da Arte, UFPA, in semiotics and Visual Arts. Solo exhibitions include Itau Cultural, Sao Paulo, 2007; and ‘Impressoes de um Lugar’ Belém, 2004, based on his groundbreaking work with the community of Nazaré de Mojacú (represented in the exhibition). Collective shows, not including frequent
He brings the printed cloths that formed the core of his work with the community of Nazaré do Mocajuba, Pará (2004/5), and his more recent project ‘Meu Mundo Teu’ (My World, Your World), 2007, involving the exchange of images between young people living in urban and rural Pará, using pinhole and digital cameras.
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A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
Since graduating in 2009 from the University of Wales, Newport, Brendan has been working as a self-employed photographic artist from his base in Cambridge, England. His work, often focused around the environment and the relationship between art and science, explores abstracted views of nature and evokes his particular interest in fantasy.
BRENDAN BERRY
In June 2009, Ashley Givens, curator of photography at the Victoria & Albert Museum, selected Brendan’s work as one of the most promising talents from 2009 UK graduates. His work has also received acclaim through recently exhibiting at galleries in London and Bristol.
Brendan has currently been undertaking his commission for ‘A Brush with Light’, as well as interning for London based photographic magazine, ‘HotShoe’ and continuing an independent project entitled, ‘Intimate Distance’.
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Celia Jackson has lived and worked in Wales for the last twenty years. Issues of mutability lie at the heart of her practice, much of which is rooted in an extended meditation upon the treacherous and elusive medium of photography.
Most of the time she uses a pinhole camera, a deceptively simple device that produces strange, unsettling images saturated with emotion and nostalgia, whose complexity belies the simplicity and purity of the camera itself.
CELIA JACKSONIn her hands the photographic process is revealed as an agent of transformation - rather than reflection - of the real, congruent with the translation of ideas and subjective responses from the imagination into the visual image.
Such images often bear little resemblance to their referents: soft and blurred, fragmentary and layered, they speak instead of the artist’s inner life, of the chaotic nature of subjective reality that time and again threatens to overthrow the controlled mechanisms of public life.
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A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
Corinne Gartmann is a photographer and printmaker living and working in Monmouthshire. She is currently completing a Masters Degree in Printmaking at the University of Wales Newport.Corinne draws her inspiration
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from the landscape and people of Monmouthshire. Recent work has included a series of screen-prints based on figurative war memorials in and around South East Wales which was exhibited at the Riverfront in Januarythis year.
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ELZA LIMAA photographer since 1984, she has focused much of her gaze on the riverside communities of the Lower Amazon, with projects such as the ‘Rota d’agua’ project in the Rio Trombetas (1996), documenting the ‘quilombo’ communities of Afro-Brazilians, and a series of visits to eight indigenous peoples in the states of Para and Maranhao, (1996-1999) funded by the Fundaçao Nacioanl do Indio (Funai).
Two projects between 1999 and 2003 traced the journeys of Amazonian explorers such as Otille Coudreau, first woman photographer of the Amazon, and Francisco Orellano, one of the early colonial explorers. This immersion in the historic representations of the Lower Amazon and the documentation of its various communities has given her work an extraordinary sensitivity to the cultural and
emotional world constructed by these peoples, a subtlety of interpretation of their raison d’etre, their mirror on their own world. Elza Lima’s work is archived in museums and foundations across Brazil, and in Portugal. She holds the title of official photographer to the Executive Secretariat of Culture of the State of Pará , undertaking documentation of the cultural life of the Lower Amazon region.
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A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
FLAVIA MUTRANAfter studying architecture, then journalism, her early professional work was based in photojournalism, while she became involved in Fotoativa in 1986. Her first recognised work was developed through the series ‘Caixa de Pandora’ (1992-94), followed by the ‘Pandoras de Agua’ series in 1996, alongside her ‘Palimpsesto’ series (1995-96). ‘Quase Memoria’ (2000-04) explored the fragility of the relationship between materiality and memory.
Her most recent work includes the ‘EGOSHOT’ series, taking images from social networking sites to construct representations of people who do not exist, unreal and distorted avatars of the web world. BIOSHOT (2009) and ‘THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE 127.0.0.1’ (2010) develop the theme of the accumulation, combination and distortion of web-based portraits into model-matrixes
of male and female, achieving improbable physiognomic representations of memory and forgetfulness. Currently engaged in research into poetics in the context of new technologies and their impact on photography and the image.
BioshotDigital / Scanned Brazil 2009
Born in Belem 1969. Graduated in Law, working as independent photographer since 1988. His work has been published in the UK (University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art), Portugal (Coleçao Nacional de Fotografia, Centro Portuguese de Fotografia, Porto) and across Brazil, and he pioneered the first live web private view in Brazil (1998).
GUY VELOSOSince 2005 he has taken on the curation of a number of photographic shows in Brazil. Veloso’s work has been described as provoking a certain discomfort, a certain strangeness, articulating a complex dissonance between the real world and other worlds (Máttar, Firmo). His images focus on the intensity and passion of the penitent, the religious cult, while
locating this intensity within the popular communities from which it emerges. Working entirely in reversal film, his images shine with a sharpness and intensity of colour, and precisely delineate the often awkward shapes of religious devotion.
PenitentesKodachrome, LeicaPará 2003
A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
IONALDO RODRIGUESBorn Belém, graduated in Social Science at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). Participated in Fotoativa workshops in 2004, including cyanotype and caliotype workshops. The series ‘The Asphalt Garden in Artesanal Photography’ was produced with a grant from the IAP (Arts Institute of Pará). Received an award to participate in the 2nd Salon SESC of Contemporary Art in Higher Education (2009).
Co-coordinator of the ‘Café Fotografico’ project at Fotoativa. Ionaldo’s work explores how developments in mapping technology can interact with more conventional forms of photographic representation. At the same time, his pinhole work introduces a sense of the cinematic image, while his essays in cyanotype printing invoke the vegetal themes of other photographers.
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IRENE ALMEIDAIrene Almeida Started her photographic career in 1996 through her involvement in the activities of Fotoativa. Almeida has participated in many collective exhibitions in Belém, and was awarded 2nd prize in the Prêmio Salão Primeiros Passos – CCBEU 2001.
Currently teaches Camera Obscura and Camera Artesenal at the Curro Velho cultural centre and at Fotoativa, supports the Colóquio de Fotografia e Imagem and the Café Fotografico and has been par t of the directorate of Fotoativa since 2007.
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A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
Born in Belém 1989. Started his photographic practice participating in the workshops at Fotoativa, Belém, and currently colllaborates in their Nucleo de Formação e Experimentacão. Exhibited in the ‘Surra de Arte’ show at the Atelier Cultural Corredor Polonês, Belém, 2009, and in the XVIII Salão de Arte Primeiros Passos – CCBEU,
JOSE DE ALMEIDA VIANA JUNIORand in the Inicial – Fotografia Contemporânea Paraense, 2010. He hopes to uncover new natural, social and artistic horizons through the documentation of people, places and landscapes, ‘researching the invisible that permeates contemporary human society and its relationship with time’. He is completing his studies in Social Communication at the Faculty of Pará.
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Joyce Nabiça was born in Belém in 1981, and came into contact with photography in 2001 at the Curro Velho Foundation, a cultural centre based in inner city Belém, offering classes in a wide range of creative disciplines, in the same year she became involved in Fotoativa. In 2007 she started to document the culture of the riverside communities
JOYCE NABIÇASince 2007 she has been developing a project in the Vila de Barca community, applying the poetry, subjectivity and uncertainty that characterises pinhole photography, providing an alternative viewpoint of this established but threatened riverside community.
on the outskirts of the city, using principally pinhole cameras. She has participated in the famous Pinhole Day exhibitions at Fotoativa since 2003, and exhibited work at the ‘Mostra de Artes Primeiros Passos’, CCBEU 2007, ‘O Eterno Feminino’, Belém 2008, and ’Fotoativa Pará –Cartografias Contemporaneas’, SESCE Pompeia e Santana, 2009.
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A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
LUCIANA MAGNOBorn in Belém 1987. The loss of any visual record of her earlier family life created an absence which led her to initiate a search for image, and she attended Chikaoka’s Photo Morphosis workshops at Fotoativa in 2003.
Since then she has participated in a number of collective exhibitions, salons, and seminars, and was a founder member of the group ‘Espiandomundo’, associated with Fotoativa. Her work includes the artesanal (pinhole), documentary, and more recently video.
Graduated in Visual Arts and Technology at the University of the Amazon, she is studying for a Masters in Arts at the Federal University of Pará. She has gained awards at the Salão SESC de Arte Contemporânea Belém 2008, the Grande Premio Arte Pará 2009, and the Premio FOTOARTE Brasilia 2009.
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MARIANO KLAUTAU FILHOBorn in Belém, Brazil in 1964. He lives and works in Belém, as photographer and researcher, and gained his Masters in Communication and Semiotics at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica in São Paulo. He is a Lecturer in Photography at the University of the Amazon, Belém, and has won the Grand Prize - Art of Pará, in 2001 and 2007.
He has exhibited in Brazil and beyond, including Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Germany, Spain, and France. His work is held in collections at the Museo de Fotografia, Curitiba, Brasil, at the Museo do Estado do Pará – Belém, and the Joaquim Paiva Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo (MAM).
His work in recent years has focused on the emotional narratives embodied in the architecture and design of the city. His long-running series ‘Materia Memoria’ started in 2002, and explores the possibility of developing cinematic resonances in sequences of images that
reflect on intimacy and memory, with the ‘Paisagens da Janela’ series, reflecting the paintings of Edward Hopper, the latest stage in this development. Current experiments in quasi-cinematic motion complement his narrative projects.
Paisagens da JanelaColour negative on print;scanned oil on canvas.c. 2005
A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
MIGUEL CHIKAOKAMiguel Chikaoka, photographer and educator by choice, has lived in Belém – Pará since 1980. He created Fotoativa in 1982, since when it has become a critical centre for the formation of a great number of contemporary photographers in Pará. Experimenting in interdisciplinary approaches to photographic education, Chikaoka has established a unique methodology
of light which has won international recognition. The guiding principles of his work find an echo in the educational practices that recognise the importance of constructing a consciousness of world citizenship, and his focus on the philosophical understanding of light and image has been seminal in the work of three generations of photographers in Brazil.
Chikaoka started his photographic career in the 1980’s, creating photo-reportage and documentaries for a number of publications, and in the early 1990’s he created his own Kamara Ko photographic agency, based in Belém – Pará, producing reportages and documentaries about the social environment of Amazonia.
Apart from publications in the press and electronic media of Brazil and overseas, his work is placed in the archives of museums in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, New York and Paris. Chikaoka will be showing a new version of his celebrated ‘Hagakure’ work, expressly created for ‘A Brush With Light’, that expresses the extent to which his practice is influenced by Eastern thought.
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NAILANA THIELYBorn in Belém, Pará, 1981. Graduated in Social Communications and Graphic Design. Since 2002 she has worked in photojournalism and illustration. She has exhibited in galleries and collective shows across Brazil, receiving awards such as the Secult Prize in Visual Arts, and scholarships including the Study Abroad Bursary for research into Visual Arts based in Quebec, Canada (2009).
Her first solo exhibition was in 2005, based on the rescuing of the memories of the inhabitants of communities on the periphery of Belém, Para, through their family records. Her association with Fotoativa began through workshops. She works in editorial and photojournalism for a range of publications across Brazil.
Her work has a focus and execution that creates space for unexpected elements of identification and reflection. The series ‘Chuva’ (Rain) explores the context of the ever-present experience of water in tropical Para, and is extended in examples of her most recent works, ‘Du sang en Ciel’, ‘Watertears’ and ‘Subaquatica’.
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A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
NEIL SMITHSONSmithson has worked for over sixteen years as a mixed media artist, using a combination of traditional skills and techniques, combined with photography and digital technologies to create hybrid visual outcomes. He has also been involved in arts education in technical and lecturing roles since 2001; he currently teaches at the University of Wales, Newport, in the Department of Design.
He has worked on a range of private commissions, including painted works sold throughout the Channel Islands and Wales, as well as illustration projects for printed outcomes in both the private and commercial markets. He has illustrated and designed fantasy artwork for literature, band logos, DVD/CD and book design. Smithson has also produced branding solutions and graphic treatments for companies such as the
Wales Millennium Centre and Gwent Independent Film Trust, as well as events companies working for clients such as Bacardi and the MTV awards. Smithson is currently studying for a Masters degree in Printmaking at the University of Wales, Newport where he is developing new skills that will complement his range of theoretical and technical disciplines.
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PATRICK PARDINIBorn in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro, and resident in Belém. A founder member of Fotoativa, between 1983 – 1993 he realised a series of documentaries on the Amazon region, including an archive project based in the ‘quilombos’ – Afro-Brazilian – communities on the Rio Trombeta of Para, and a year later collaborated on an audiovisual documentation of the lives of adolescents in
rural Amazonia, in assocoiation with the Kamera Ko agency. After a five year residency in Amiens, France (1995-99) where he curated the ‘Une Autre Amazonie’ and ‘Mondial Hors Champ’ exhibitions, Pardini returned to Belém wher he started his most recent and current project. ‘Arborescência’ is based on research into the relationship between humans and nature, civilisation and forest.
Pardini seeks to redefine the look of the spectator faced with representations of nature and its complexity, and rejects the simplistic opposition of natural versus industrial. Pardini has exhibited widely in Brazil, Latin America and Europe.
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A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
PAULA SAMPAIOPaula Sampaio was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil in 1965, and has lived in Belém since 1982. Graduating in Social Communication, she undertook graduate study in Communication and Semiotics. Her photographic career began in 1987, working in photojournalism, and she became involved in the activities of Fotoativa. She currently works for the ‘O Liberal’ newspaper, and at the Instituto de Artes do Pará.
Her principal photographic focus has been on the communities that live on the edges of the principal highways of the Amazon region, in particular the Transamazonica and Belém-Brasilia. This work, which started in 1990, has received a number of bursaries and awards, and has continued during the last ten years. Her most recent work, ‘Terra de Negro ‘ documents the Quilombo (Afro-Brazilian) communities of Pará.
Sampaio’s images are striking and often oblique representations of the human and literally earthly environment of the migrant communities along the highways, and have become iconic within Brazil and beyond. At the same time, her work fiercely protects the dignity and privacy of the people she works with, and serves as an object lesson in the long term relationship between photographer and community.
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RAFAEL PINHEIRO ARAUJOBorn Belém 1986. Graduated in Marketing (CESUPA 2007) and Comunicaçao Social UFPA 2009. Attended the Photomorphosis’ workshop, led by Miguel Chikaoka, April 2010. Rafael has exhibited collectively in Brazil and Cambodia, and received awards at the Concurso SEST/SENAT Arte em Movimento, Belém 2008. His work explores the relatively unrecognised culture of communities dominated by the river and the small scale industries that live from it.
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A BRUSH WITH LIGHTCONTRIBUTORS
SIOBHAN CANAVANSiobhan Canavan studied on the BA (Hons) Documentary Photography course at the University of Wales, Newport, graduating in 2009. She lives and works in London and has undertaken a number of commissions and internships, including Running in Heels and Burberry respectively. Whatever the request, Siobhan is insistent upon
using her Holga camera, with which she produces the dreamy, dematerialised images that are her trademark. She prefers the softness of the Holga’s images to the pin-sharp digital technologies with which the photographic marketplace is currently swamped. Her highly distinctive style is instantly
recognisable and her steadfast commitment to black-and-white film evokes a wistfulness and nostalgia for childhood and times gone by. For A Brush with Light Siobhan has created an atmospheric short film featuring green spaces and places of interest or beauty in Newport, and entitled ‘A Welsh Picture Story’.
She wishes to convey how valuable a tool photography can be in the contemplation of past events, and to invite the viewer to question why one chooses to capture and document certain moments over others.
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WALDA MARQUESMarques worked for 17 years in make-up for theatre, TV and studio photography, and developed her photographic practice through the workshops of Miguel Chikaoka at Fotoativa. She established a portrait studio in 1989, in collaboration with Otavio Cardoso, and has developed a series of ‘fotonovelas’ whose narratives are based on texts, illustrations and photographic images.
Walda has gained awards in the Salao de Fotografia do Centro Cultural Brasil-Estados Unidos, Belém 1997, the Abra/Coca-Cola project, São Paulo 1998, and the Salãão de Arte Parã in 1997 and 2007. She has exhibited at the Musueum of Modern Art (MAM) São Paulo in 2003, 2005 and 2006, amongst many other exhibitions across Brazil.
Amongst her outstanding work is the series of portraits of the women of the Ver o Peso market, Belem, a project that she developed in collaboration with Miguel Chikaoka. Her work is about the feminine universe, an ironic and passionate account of the world of desire, love, hope, disillusion, laced with echos of tabus and sensuality.
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A BRUSH WITH LIGHT
A BRUSH WITH LIGHT WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE FOLLOWING:
Project Co-ordinators
Celia JacksonHumphry Trevelyan
Project Co-ordinator / Curator, Brazil
Patricia Costa
Curator, Wales
Celia Jackson
Assistant Curator, Brazil
Ionaldo Rodrigues
Assistant co-ordinator, Brazil
Luciana Magno
Catalogue Design
Duncan Gravestock
Epsilon printing
Ian LlewelynGawain Barnard
Fabrication & installation
Matthew Harris
Special thanks to:
Nick CadmanMiguel ChikaokaGeraint CunnickEmmy ChaterPaul DaviesMichael GoodeDerek Lawther
Denis LewisMohamad ‘Fez’ MiahChris O’MalleyJason SmallNic Young