Ana Vaz: Cosmovisions

Ana Vaz’s essay-films and expanded works speculate upon the relationships between self and other, myth and history through a cosmology of signs, cinematic and literary references. Responding to Brazil’s modern colonial legacy and environmental destruction, the artist approaches cinema from human and non-human perspectives, assembling visual cosmologies which conflate the nature-culture divide. Join us for a conversation with the artist following the screening.

This event is part of the Violence of Abstraction series, which brings together artists’ moving image that deals with colonial legacies of modernism and its interrelated ecological-climatic dynamics in Brazil, this screening series favours political openness as lens to examine its contemporary political moment.

On Translations series

Ana Vaz: "A Idade da Pedra", 2013, 16mm transferred to HD, colour, sound, 29’

A Idade da Pedra takes place in the Brazilian central plateau, a vast and arid territory known as sertão, from which Brasilia, the country’s modern capital, was excavated and built. Moving between geological and historical time, the film follows Clarice Lispector’s description of Brasilia as a “time in the future that has already passed.” As the artist explores the geological foundations of the city and the ideals of modernism, the quarry becomes the site for an alternative history of exploration, prophecy and myth.

Ana Vaz: "Olhe Bem As Montanhas", 2018, HD video, colour, sound, 30’

In Olhe Bem As Montanhas Vaz draws parallels between the state of Minas Gerais in the south west of Brazil and Nord-Pas-de-Calais in northern France, two regions marked by centuries of mining activities. Borrowing its title from the phrase “Look closely at the mountains!” coined by Brazilian artist Manfredo de Souzanetto, whose geometric landscapes often evoked the surfaces of the region, the film adopts the perspective of hollow and gutted mountains to question their industrial memory and spectral futures.