Starting Point

2020

© Competition: part of the collection Eau de Cologne counterfaits (c) Rôsangela Rennó / Stiftung RWWA (file #33-GN238)

The work of the Brazilian artist Rôsangela Rennó is characterized by the way she deals with discarded pictures she finds at flea markets all over the world or found footage from private and public archives or newspapers. In her long-standing artistic work, Rennó explores the relationship between remembering and forgetting. She critically examines Brazil's past and investigatively works out hidden information from the pictures of popular photography collections.

By appropriating found images, she works against forgetting. Thus she transforms small flea market prints into large museum prints. She transfers a stock of images into complex installations, sometimes as projections or in connection with film. In this way she not only creates an encounter with anachronistic image carriers and historical artefacts, but also exposes new readings and alternative narratives. 

"Since the 1980s I have been attracted to vanacular images and a little later to archive images, because I always thought that through this kind of images I could make a connection to people and humanity. Especially in Brazil, I think that our history is written by the lack of information and images, and not in moments that have been well documented and told by the people."
Rosângela Rennó out of the video: Rosângela Rennó – on Rio Montevideo, The Photographers Gallery, 2016 

Rosângela Rennó is an invited AMA artist at the Stiftung Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv zu Köln (RWWA).


Rosângela Rennó im Interview bei Photoszene ON AIR 2020.