Building Materials

Searching for a way to introduce myself inside these sets, i decided to look for pictures of my self already taken and pasting/placing them in/side this photographed sets. This was in 2009 when I first started working on these photos. I looked for poses that would appear as possible although not taken for this purpose.

Doing this so I could have the most immediate result, which is something i appreciate at least in a first stage, I didn’t had to spend time thinking about actual poses in which I would photograph myself, take the photographs, uploading them and only then use them, and ended up adding another dimension of space time and purpose, decontextualizing these aspects through collage.

In this case the photo I selected was taken by me inside the bathroom of the apartment i stayed in during my vacations in February 2006, the background is actually the curtain of the bathtub and I took the photograph in front of the mirror.

I cut my figure and placed it in the photograph of my parents bedroom/living room and it looks as if I’m inside this room but now I’m not photographing the mirror but us, the ones outside the room and picture, once more accentuating what i highlighted in my previous post: two different spaces/worlds are revealed, the one inside the picture an the other beyond the picture, and this time I’m not acting from the outside-in but from the inside-out revealing the possibility of a communication and an activeness where it was “supposed” to be a passiveness: WE should be looking in as observers and not be observed by IT.

And this happened just because I needed to see something quickly. Sometimes not doing exactly what we think it would be better and choosing the easiest way can provide us with unexpected and meaningful results.

Just the fact of putting together the photos I published in the previous post in a certain way, has showed me a tridimensional possibility to use them. Looking like a doll’s house with two floors I sudenly imagined them as tridimensional sets.

I’ve again realized one thing that really interests me even if not very conscious untill now, which is the fact that an image presents us always a diferent world/space of exploration and severall times along the way I’ve had the will to go throuh it and evidencing the separation between the two worlds. Like Alice going throug the mirror wich has been an image wich has been quite influential for me at an early stage of my development as an artist.

This border also representing de border between me and the other.

I now realize I’ve been exploring this in different ways: creating physicall but transparent barriers, or “tridimensionalizing” an image which becomes an installation and has different levels of possibilitity of physical access.

In this photo of my installation Facing You I enter partially in this different world wich looks exactly real but actually it’s a personally created version of an image like you can find in a mirror near you if you just could touch what’s in the other side.

I see this is and has been important for me.

This is a nucleus of photographs that i intend to work on. These pictures were taken by my mother to show her parents how was the house she was living in when she got married with my father. My grandparents were living in Angola. All the decoration was thought and executed by my parents. I never lived in this space while decorated this way, when I was born they amplified the house adding the space of what was once a garage and a small back room. The decoration was quite different, the coloured walls became all white and the overall feeling was quite rustic now, but some of the fabrics and almost all objects remained. I think they did an amazing job and once I saw this images I was quite fascinated by them and wished I could have lived in this colourful space also. Although this is a space I didn’t experience directly it has left a strong imprint in my imaginary.

At this stage i see these as sets for action, my action. I want to see myself using this space. wich strategy will I use:photographic collage, short animation pieces using them as backdrop, projected slides as a set for a performance or video; will I work with myself as a sillouet or as a full detailed image? I see a lot of different paths to explore. I´m excited!