Process Room 15.02.08- 28.02.08

 1. Act or effect of detailing
2. Circumstantiated or detailed narration or exhibition; minutiae, trifle, particularity
3. Object of this narration, small element
4. Derivation: by extension of meaning: thing, person or fact without importance
5. Rubric: architecture, visual arts: each part of an art work or plan taken separately
Dicionário Houaiss Língua Portuguesa (Houaiss Dictionary of the Portuguese Language)

While on residency at IMMA I have continued to utilize photography and video as essential tools, but, conceptually, I have expanded my projects by investigating new forms of contact. As often occurs in my artistic process, I work in conjunction with other people who are invited to be photographed. Since the body is an element present in my research, in this project, I am investigating types of personal accounts of the body. Each person who has been invited has freely chosen a part of his or her body to be photographed, something that alludes to a personal account to be told and registered using sound – a personal history for an image of oneself.

The set of images and audio-accounts incorporated into Detalhe (Detail) is configured in this puzzle where a totality is never actually revealed, since I part from the hypothesis that a person perhaps can never be completely recognized and assimilated: a person is also his or her memories, narratives and vestiges that are left behind by these personal histories.

I have investigated how an individual establishes an image of him or herself, confronting what exists inside that person and what he or she allows to be seen. This project demands the presence of other people and constant exchange between the one who photographs and the one who is photographed and to date this work has been an approximation and a dialogue with other artists and visitors involved and engaged with IMMA

In my opinion, Detalhe (Detail) is an opportunity to try to encompass issues inherent to the human being, such as identity, interiority and exteriority, presence and absence, fiction and reality, individuality and collectivity. This is a project that I plan to develop, but I am open to the flux of the process, to the uncertain paths taken during the execution of this idea, since I think that working with art is always open to the experiences and the collective exchanges that can emerge.
Mariana Silva da Silva _ February 2008

Silva da Silva develops works that aim towards a minimal encounter point, she is interested in the experience of contact and of proposing other peoples involvement in her work by means of their participation in situations that are photographed or filmed. Recent projects by Silva da Silva include Small Distance, Palácio das Artes Museum, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerias, Brazil, 2006 and Border Effects, Subjectivity and Public Spaces, Memorial do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil, 2005. Her residency is kindly supported by the UNESCO – Aschberg Bursaries for Artists.

For a printable version of this information please download the following document  Mariana Silva da Silva: DETALHE (DETAIL)  (Word doc 2000 – 260KB)

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