Filipa Frois Almeida
Work
homogeneizador de memórias
estado límbico
eu não costumava pensar
time heals
selbsporträt
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homogeneizador de memórias is about the vulnerability and ephemerality of human memories.
When I was seven years old, I came into contact with death through the loss of my mother. The portraits disappeared as if nothing had happened. Involuntarily I forgot and for many years felt indifferent to this event. When I encountered death again as a teenager, I questioned everything. After several years of psychotherapy, I reached a moment of self-confidence and reconciliation with life. We are part of a larger body, in constant interaction, in constant transformation. Many years later, I was taken to the family grave. During a moment alone, I broke down into fragments because of memories I don't have and because I felt that I had never stopped waiting. The faded photographs exposed the insensitive reality. Blurred images, like forgotten memories. What is this place of homogenised memories?
We photograph to remember, because events come to an end and images remain. But despite preserving a moment, photography is a living, changing organism. Like us, it ages and metamorphoses. In this project I intend to give form to this ill-defined imagery, like a dream in which we can't distinguish the faces, even the ones we most want to see.
The result of an accident of various experiments, I explore the family portraits in which the ink is unstable, as a metaphor for memories versus involuntary forgetfulness. Ink is like blood, like a living memory that fades without guidance or control. Inevitably, the image becomes a homogeneous stain, synonymous with similar memories.
Exploring the plastic characteristics of photography, I try to give form to memories and images from the unconscious. At the same time, in homogeneizador de memórias I explore the inconsistencies of memory in order to reconcile them with the natural cycle of life.