Luiza Baldan - Cruzamentos - Contemporary art in Brazil

Hi, my name is Luiza Baldan. I am from Rio de Janeiro. I graduated in the visual arts from FIU [Florida International University] in Miami and I have a Masters in visual arts from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. I have worked since the year 2000, especially in photography, and in some cases in video and text. But the concept of the work is totally photographic. The works that are part of this exhibition are from a series titled Pinturinhas, exactly because of the pictorial aspects of photography. These images were found by chance, randomly, in the urban environment, whether due to the adaptations people make in these places, in their constructions, by the rain, by soil, and so on. In the case of these two specific photographs, they happened in the end of 2009, and were the initial images of this series. They happened during my first residency project— which is a common practice in my work— but it happened when I was living in Pedregulho, an emblematic building in Rio de Janeiro. It is an icon of Brazilian architecture from the '50s, a project of the architect Affonso Reidy during the time when Rio de Janeiro was still the capital of Brazil. And I went [to the building] to spend one month in this place loaded with information, with history, with people— where there already exists a load of information that is very potent about this place. What to say about this place, besides all that has been already said, is the issue. And it was a great school, in fact, because I noticed that there was a place that was mine, that I could speak, always, through my work, independent of how emblematic this place was. Through the intimate connection I made with the place, I could produce a body of work that was very unique. This series Pinturinhas starts there, because it shows a series of facts about the place that were very special, and that went far beyond what I expected. The sinuous curves of modern architechture, that building built on a hill, which is so visible— you can Google it, you can see it in architectural books— it is there as an image. But there are small details on how this place is transformed by weather conditions, or by the action of time, or by the hands of people who live there who adapt the place to their necessities. There photos are part of these notes, or the small details that interest me so much in my work.