Ana Lira

Residentes

Ana Lira

Caruaru – Pernambuco – Brasil)

The situations that I try to experience go through three pillars: how living can be a political act, the collective experiences as mediation processes and the development of work-project instead of work-object. In this sense, I engage with projects that are carried out via partnerships and collective creations that observe the leads and articulations of the relations of power that affect our daily life and how we produce knowledge in the world.

I experience these processes by prospecting, arranging and preparing strategies of mediation and communication. Image, in its varied shapes, the publications, urban interventions, training actions and the interchange experiences with whom one is looking for parallel alternatives are inserted in this path.

The photography and visual art projects that I have developed, such as Voto!, Não-Dito, Mandalla and Terrane and formative projects Entre-Frestas and Cidades Visuais are part of this cycle.

Additional Information

Education – Photographer and visual artist who lives and works in Recife, Brazil. Her work focuses on relations of power and its implications in the dynamics of communication. Is a specialist in Cultural Theory and Criticism. She has developed independent research, curatorial and educational projects articulated with visual projects. She has participated in more than seven collectives for two decades. Is the articulator of the educational projects Cidades VisuaisEntre-Frestas and Circuitos Possíveis. Received the 2015 Funarte Arte Contemporânea Award for the exhibition Não Dito.

Exhibited works at À Nordeste (Sesc 24 de Maio, São Paulo, 2019); Entremoveres (Museu da Abolição, Recife, 2019), Não-Dito (CAL,Brasília, 2019; CCBEU, Prêmio Funarte de Arte Contemporânea, Belém, 2017; CCI, Recife, 2015); Os da Minha Rua (MAB, Recife, 2018), Arte Democracia Utopia (MAR, Rio de Janeiro, 2018-2019) with the collective Amò, As Bandeiras da Revolução: Pernambuco 1817-2017 (Galeria Massangana, Política da Arte, Fundaj, Recife, 2017), Agora Somos Todxs Negrxs (VideoBrasil, São Paulo, 2017), Antilogias: o fotográfico na Pinacoteca (Pina, São Paulo, 2017); in the collective action Aparelhamento (São Paulo – 2016); in the collective exhibition Fotos contam Fatos (Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo – 2015/2016); at the 31st International Art Biennial of São Paulo (São Paulo, 2014) and in the itineraries at the Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte – 2015 / Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal, 2015/2016); in the program Raízes e Asas (SESC VITRINE, Sesc Santana, São Paulo, 2015); in the collective exhibition Slides (Feira Plana, São Paulo, 2016); at the International Photography Festival of Porto Alegre (Fest Foto Poa, Margs, 2015); in the exhibition Marés (Sesc Sergipe, Aracaju, 2013 – Trotamundos Coletivo); and in the collective Linguagens 2008 (Museum of the State of Pernambuco, Recife, 2008).

She has participated in the residency programs of Art and Activism in Latin America, a partnership of the Despina with the dutch organization Prince Claus Fund. The third edition (2018) of the project had as theme Dissent and Destruction; Residency São Jerônimo, articulated by the artist Alexandre Sequeira, in the city of Belém / PA, with the purpose of connecting projects that debate permanence, impermanence, memory, affection and the city. The project focused on the Voto | Não – Dito in collective memory; and the residency program promoted by the artist Eustáquio Neves, in Diamantina / MG, under the guidance of the Terrane project, at the ENA.

She is the author of the book Voto, published by independent publisher Pingado Prés and the book Terrane (Recife, Retratografia, 2018, digital edition – a project developed in dialogue with Cláudia Oliveira, Lourdes da Silva and Luzia Simões). Published in the series Pretexto, of the Tent of Books; in the collection Other Photographs in the Brazilian Art 21st Century, of the Cobogó Publishing House; in the Journal of Borda (Editions 02 and 03), Ediciones Costeñas / Tenda de Livros; Ateliê Publique-se V.5, by Livrinho de Papel Finíssimo; and Linguagens 2008. Participated in the collective films [projetotorresgemeas] e Eleições: crise de representação

Proposition for residence

In the cities that work, I map and accompany collective experiences to share them and strengthen practices of creative and political collaboration. One of the examples of this type of project is the Voto! | Não-Dito that ended in the first half of 2019, after 6 years of work. It culminates in an exhibition that changes with the context of the city in which it is exhibited. I remain in the cities, during the exhibition, mapping collectives and constructing experiences that discuss lack of representativeness.

This unfolded in the project …sobre um sentir insurgente, which through experiences, mappings and analysis of symbolic productions brought by workshop participants, exchanges between artists and activists and sessions of open studio visits, elaborates a production of sensitive material for use in spaces and public institutions and the construction of urban interventions.

A second path of interest concerns a mapping of routes, narratives, strategies, artifacts, experiences, desires and visualities that have been neglected, forgotten or disregarded in their potentialities. I see them as portals of latent experiences that help to review micropolitics of existence.

I feel the need to understand how the survival strategies of the black people are breathing in other countries and what are the possible exchanges with our scenario. Given the challenges of the Brexit context, I believe that London is a key city for looking at latent experiences on these issues.

What further strengthened my experience in these issues were two projects that started last year: a collective, which was called Política Pública and another that I have developed inviting people to share with me some specific knowledge, which is the Numbra.

Política Pública was a project produced with four other black artists, in Rio de Janeiro, who are Marta Supernova, Marina Alves, Thais Rosa and Thais Rocha, in a collective articulation that we call Amò. We listened to the strategies of community articulation of the inhabitants of the Small Africa, between August 2018 and June 2019, and materialized experiences, workshops, artifacts, meetings and a space for collective exchanges. A synthesis of the actions of the project was exhibited at the Rio Art Museum, at the exhibition Arte, Democracia, Utopia.

The experiences of Numbra, consists of an invitation I make for 9 people, who can be artists-activists or not. Since I am living with the diasporic communities and, calmly, trying to observe how this place of potentialities, reception and articulation are built in contexts that stress migratory flows, I felt it might be nice to produce one or more days of Numbra experiences in the residence.

And I want to think fondly, too, about building an experimental publication as a result of this process, as well as to think about exchanges between the groups and artists that I have lived in the residence with which I have worked in Brazil.

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