The video ‘Cobertores’ has been recently selected by Filmessay for a special streaming session. Can you tell us something about this project?

Luciana Benaduce (LB): 'Cobertores’ started during my practice of walking around São Paulo, the city in which I was born. During one of my walks, I found an object that got my attention: a bunch of clothes on the floor. The clothes had an ambiguous form; sometimes it looked like a human body, sometimes a bunch of blankets. This ambiguous form of the object interested me. I was thinking at the blanket as an object that covers and protects, a metaphor for the creation of “someone’s home”. I started to document every blanket I found in the streets of São Paulo with my camera, and organize the photographs through a typology method. After that, I’ve felt a necessity to expand my work to the materialization of the object, so I decided to do a public intervention in the city, using the same blankets I had been documenting. The intervention happened during two days at Vale do Anhangabaú in São Paulo downtown and the outcome of this project is a video. 'Cobertores’ has many connections with my previous works as an object between private and public, that are in constantly transformation. Beside that, I have always been interested in architecture and urban signals, in the area between private and public space. I’ve found out that architectures elements are always present in these arrangements, as well as in several photos I’ve been taking since 2001. 'Cobertores’ is an eclectic experience and a true source for my research.

© Luciana Benaduce, stills from the video 'Cobertores' 

Can you introduce us to the project 'Paisagem’?

LB: 'Paisagem’ is a project inspired by the pictorialism movement in photography. Since I have studied some photographers from this movement I was attracted by the style and the way of projecting an emotional intent to the viewer’s imaginary. Afterwards I started to develop this series trying to follow an impressionist approach, often manipulating manually the focus and light in the camera. The intention was to lose the relation with the real and get a soft atmosphere, nostalgic and dreamy photography’s.  

© Luciana Benaduce

What about 'Azul’?

LB: 'Azul’ is an experimental project in the nature. I used expired positive films with my rolleiflex camera and a Canon Ae1. The results was not predictable and I was captured and interested in this process.

You now live in Amsterdam after growing up in São Paulo. How was this change and how is affecting your artistic research?

LB: It was a big shift. I was used to live in a big city where everything looks chaotic and out of order, which was a source of inspiration for my work. When I arrived in The Netherlands I found the opposite country where everything works well and is in a perfect order. The citizens are much more integrated and connected to the public space, this led my work to adapt to this new environment.  During my Master I found a very interesting post-war generation architect who illustrated his vision on the use of the city, in which unsightly areas of urban space were transformed into usable and architecturally interesting playgrounds. He designed in Amsterdam more than 700 playgrounds with a humanist architecture, which meant an architecture for the community, in the city of Amsterdam, at post war. Nowadays you can still find a few in the city, one of them is at Vondelpark where  my public intervention 'Hut’ took place.

 
© Luciana Benaduce, Barão 955

I really like the series 'Entropy’. It impacts on the infinity growth assumption of the Enlightenment. As well it reflects a distinctive character of the city of Sao Paulo.

LB: That is true and the curious part is that the project was developed in Utrecht. This series was part of my research during my master at HKU in Utrecht. The research was focused on the relationship between private and public sphere through the perspective of the objects. I was interested in appropriation and transformation of an object that already existed in between public and private sphere in the city. These photos were taken during 3 months, following the demolition process of a public building in Utrecht.

© Luciana Benaduce

Any exhibition you have seen that got your attention in the past? 

LB: Cildo Meirelles at Pinacoteca São Paulo, Philip-Lorca diCorcia at De Pont Museum in Tilburg, Yael Bartana at Venice Biennale, Jeff Wall at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam are some of those.

Any artist that you find vibrant and interesting in this moment… 

LB: Francesca Woodman and Bernd and Hilla Becker always! Berna Reale, Zoro Feigl, Henrique Oliveira, João Castilho.

Plans for the future?

LB: I’ll be working on the publication of a photo book. Be inspired and keep researching.

Books that you would not want ever off the shelf?

LB: 'Cartas a um jovem poeta’ (Letters to a Young Poet) by Rainer Maria Rilke. 'Esculpir o tempo’ (Sculpting in Time) by  Andrei Tarkovsky.

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LINKS
Luciana Benaduce 
Brazil 
Filmessay