This week we will turn our attention to Brazilian Photography. We’ll begin with the touching and necessary work of Claudia Andujar on the essence and transformation of the Yanomami indigenous people, we’ll delve into the rituals full of meanings of Rodrigo Braga, we’ll get to know the creative narratives of Lenora de Barros through the records of incredible video performances, we’ll be delighted with the sublime poetic fictions of Alexandre Sequeira and finally we will get to know the creative work of the acclaimed Rosangela Rennó, the photographer who does not photograph. – Ana Leal

I find the whites and the amnesias more interesting than memory itself.

It is often said that Rosângela Rennó is a photographer who does not photograph, and that’s how she became known in Brazil from the late eighties onwards, when she decided to substitute the photographic act with the appropriation of archival images. She began working with photographs of family albums, creating series whose results were decisive for the concepts of contaminated photography and photography of appropriation.

One of the Brazilian artists with greatest international acclaim, Rennó has developed an extensive body of work and research that seeks to readdress, from a photographic as well as a social and historical perspective, issues related to memory, oblivion, identity and obscurity. In her series created with images found in penal archives and photographs published in newspapers, she comments on the power relationships inherent in the social and political contexts of that kind of photographic record. Further, her interest in intertextuality, where she incorporates text and images both taken from mass media and documentation systems, reflects her attraction for the stories of non-winners, all those whose identities get lost in the midst of generalised anonymity.

Vis-à-vis the imagistic overabundance that characterises our digital era, Rosângela Rennó’s work prompts a perceptual shift in order to produce an instance of reflection and questioning about the future and the power of the image. To work with images of the past allows the artist to collaborate on the narrative reconstruction of history, providing new sources of knowledge and demonstrating repeatedly that photography, in this sense, is still a largely unexplored field.

Text by Veronica Cordero, Curator / CdF

Rosângela Rennó (Belo Horizonte, 1962), graduated in Fine Arts from the Guignard School and in Architecture from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. She holds a PhD in Arts from the School of Communications and Arts at Universidade de São Paulo [USP]. Her work is marked by the appropriation of discarded images, found in flea markets and fairs, and by the investigation of the relationship between memory and forgetting. In her photographs, objects, videos or installations, Rennó works with family albums and images obtained from public or private archives. She also dedicated her self to the creation of authorial books.

Solo shows [selection]: Appel Foundation (Amsterdam, 1995), Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA (Los Angeles, 1996), Australian Center for Photography ACP (Sydney, 1999), Instituto Tomie Ohtake – ITO (São Paulo, 2001), Museu de Arte da Pampulha (Belo Horizonte, 2002), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil – CCBB (Rio de Janeiro, 2003), Museu
de Arte Moderna Aloisio Magalhães – MAMAM (Recife, 2006), Prefix Institute Contemporary Art (Toronto, 2008), Pharos Center for Contemporary Art (Nicosia, 2009), Centro de Fotografía (Montevidéu, 2011), Centro de Arte Moderna CAM – Fundação Gulbenkian (Lisbon, 2012), FotoMuseum (Winterthur, 2012), Centro Atlântico de Arte Moderno CAAM (Las Palmas, 2014), Photographers’ Gallery (London, 2016), Oi Futuro (Rio de Janeiro, 2016), Instituto Moreira Salles – IMS (Rio de Janeiro, 2017/2018), Museum Für Angewandte Kunst Köln MAKK, (Cologne, 2021), Estação Pinacoteca (São Paulo, 2021).

Group shows [selection]: Aperto93,
45th Venice Biennale (1993), Insite97
(San Diego and Tijuana, 1997), 2nd Johannesburg (1997), 2nd Berlin Biennale (2001), 50a Venice Biennale – Brazilian Pavillion (2003), Histoires des Amériques, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (2004), Panorama da Arte Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna – MAM SP (São Paulo, 2005), Phantasmagoria, Specters of Absence, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Bogotá, 2007), 1st New Orleans Biennial (New Orleans, 2008), ArtesMundi 3, Museum of Art of Wales (Cardiff, 2008), Óscar Muñoz y Rosângela Rennó. Crónicas de la Ausencia, Museo Rufino Tamayo (Mexico City, 2009), Elle@ centrepompidou – Artistes femmes dans les collections du Musée National d’Art Moderne (Paris, 2010), 22a e 29a Bienal Internacional de São Paulo (1994 and 2010), Magical Consciousness, Arnolfini (Bristol, 2011), A sense of Perspective, Tate Liverpool (2011), 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011), BES-Photo Award 2012, Museu Berardo (Lisboa, 2012), Intense Proximity – La Triennale de Paris, Palais de Tokio (Paris, 2012), América Latina 1960-2013, Fondation Cartier (Paris, 2014), Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards Short List Exhibition, Aperture Foundation (New York, 2014), Cruzamentos: Contemporary Art in Brazil, Wexner Center for the Arts (Ohio, 2014), Autophoto, Fondation Cartier (Paris, 2017), Confusing Public and Private, The 3rd Beijing Photo Biennial, CAFA Art Museum, (Beijing, 2018), 23rd Photobiennale Festival, Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, (Thessalonica, 2018), Lost and Found, ICA (Singapura, 2019), Pan y Circo: Appease, Distract, Disrupt, Another Space (New York, 2019), Le Supermarché des images, Jeu de Paume (Paris, 2020).

Prizers [selection];CIFO Grants & Commissions Program (Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, 2014). Photobook of the year (Paris Photo
– Aperture Foundation Photobook Award, 2013). Historical Book Award (Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2013). 1o ALICE Awards – Artistic Landmarks in the Contemporary Experience (Global Board of Contemporary Art, 2012). Prêmio Jabuti (Câmara Brasileira do Livro, São Paulo, 2004). 13o International Festival of Electronic Art (VideoBrasil, São Paulo, 2001). Bolsa Guggenheim (John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, 1999).

Main Collections:Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim CACI, Belo Horizonte; Fundação Gulbenkian-CAM, Lisboa; Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand / Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro; Coleção Itaú Cultural, São Paulo; Coleção SESC São Paulo; Guggenheim Museum, Nova York; Museu de Arte de São Paulo MASP; Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Madri; Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art / MOMA, Nova York; National Museum of Women in the Arts NMWA, Washington; Pinacotecado Estado de São Paulo; Tate Modern, Londres.