Scrolls
 

2024

Photographic collage: 50x350cm

Photograph and hand-made paper: 20x30cm
 

The work was exhibited as part of group exhibition “Autography of a Paper” Brussels, 2024. 

“Scrolls” consists of a photographic collage and an analog photograph together with hand-made paper
made with local South Alentejo plants such as ferns, eucalyptus and fig leaves.

Dragging, pointing, holding, caressing, stopping, planning, controlling,

triggering. The collage assembles found and archival images from the

Middle Ages through the Renaissance to current news images, combined

with my own photographs - with the hand as the central motif. A closer

look reveals connections, contradictions and mimicry that cut across time,

medium and iconography. Inspired by papyrus scrolls, it explores the

original role paper played in bridging civilisations, forever changing the way

information was recorded, disseminated and preserved, leading us to the

complexity of the visual cultures in which we find ourselves in today. Images

depicting gestures from the hands of present-day world leaders, intertwined

with photographs of vulnerability and care attempt to question the absurdity

of current political situations and atrocities. What hand makes the decisions

and what hand is affected by those decisions?
 

The photograph with hand-made paper was exhibited in a small room of the

exhibition. An intimacy was created between the work and the viewer and a

distinct smell from the plant-based paper was present.