Galeria Fortes Vilaça is pleased to present Bibliotheca (Bibliotheca) and Cerimônia do Adeus (Farewell Ceremony), two impressive works by Rosângela Rennó, one of the artists who represents Brazil in the L Biennale di Venezia . The exhibition will open simultaneously with the launch of the book Rosângela Rennó – O Arquivo Universal e Outros Arquivos ( The Universal Archive and Other Archives), published by Cosac & Naify.

Bibliotheca (Bibliotheca) had its start in 1992, when Rennó bought six full boxes of slides at a flea market in Brussels. Between second-hand stores and donations from friends and institutions, Rennó has gathered a vast collection. The photographs date from the end of the 19th century to the 1980’s.

In Bibliotheca (Bibliotheca), shown last year at the Pampulha Museum and this year at the Banco do Brasil’s Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro, Rennó takes apart, edits, and reorganizes this material. The albums are organized in plexiglass displays, which in turn are collected into groups. On the tops of these displays, what we see is an accurate photo reproduction of the photo albums and boxes of slides sealed inside. The artist created a color coding system for the backdrops and supports of the displays, based on the origin of the images and the place where the objects were bought. Six mapas mundi, an archive, and an artist’s book provide detailed information on the objects on display. Every file in the archive has a record of the number of pages, the state of conservation, and the quantity of photographs in each album; there is also a fictitious narrative made by the artist based on the images that she saw.

In the words of Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the exhibitions at the Pampulha Museum and the Banco do Brasil’s Cultural Center: “Rosângela’s work contains by its nature a very high level of research. She contrasts the apparent coldness created by this conceptuality with the utilitization of very hot themes such as family, sex, power, and violence. This mixtures gives her work a very special, exciting tension.”

Cerimônia do Adeus (Farewell Ceremony) began with another archive that the artist acquired in Cuba, where young couples receive government aid for marriage ceremonies, which include a photograph. In these photos, newlyweds kiss each other and bid the camera farewell. The same situation repeats with different characters and slight changes in the scenery. There are forty photographs in all, divided into ten groups. Here too, institutional and personal records blur. There is a continual negotiation between the story lived by the characters and those created by the viewer.