Rosângela Rennó’s Wedding Landscape (1996) is made up of layers of large sheets of plexiglass, to which the artist glued strips of negatives she retrieved from a wedding photography studio in Havana in 1994. Before the work went on view in Chosen Memories, a survey of Latin American contemporary art currently on view at MoMA, our photography conservators made a routine assessment of the work’s condition. What they found—and the best way to treat it—turned out to be anything but routine.
“Materials of film are generally held in an archive. So they’re typically not put on display,” explains Craig Kamrath, a photography conservation fellow, “But in this instance, the film is what you’re there to look at, these strips of negatives.”
Photography conservator Lee Ann Daffner was baffled: “When I first saw this work, I didn’t know what to think, because we had so many questions.” For one, there was a white, powdery substance appearing throughout the layers of plexiglass. Was it mold, or the dreaded “plexi disease” that can occur when a piece of plexiglass abrades, or something else? Daffner and Kamrath worked with conservation scientist Catherine H. Stephens and conservation science fellow Kyna Biggs to take samples and analyze them. But then another problem presented itself: these negatives, made of cellulose acetate, have a limited shelf life before they begin degrading. Thorough detective work needed to be done to determine the age of the negatives and how much acetic acid they were off-gassing, a sign of their decay. And was the plexiglass helping or hurting their condition?
“We’re right on the doorstep with this artwork,” Kamrath said. The discoveries are constantly unfolding in our latest episode of Conservation Stories.
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The comments and opinions expressed in this video are those of the speaker alone, and do not represent the views of The Museum of Modern Art, its personnel, or any artist.
106 x 71 cm
Pigmented ink print on Hahnemühle Museum Etching 350g, 23K gold and vinylic paint
Photo courtesy of artist
81 x 61 cm
Pigmented ink print on Hahnemühle Museum Etching 350g, 23K gold and vinylic paint
Photo courtesy of artist
Wedding Landscape (1996) is one of the 6 works by Rennó that are part of the MoMA collection.
Rennó’s work was constructed from a collection of negatives donated to her in 1994, in Havana, by a Cuban photographer specialized in wedding photos. According to Rennó, “the monotonous repetition of the scenes, the monotony of the documentation, was what really interested me in that collection of negatives. I realized that the number of scenes following a repeating pattern could work as a kind of texture and the arrangement of these negative strips between acrylic plates would suggest the overlapping of planes, as in a landscape”. Rennó is represented with 6 works in MoMA´s collection.
The above quote is part of an interview with Rennó that is part of MoMA’s series Giving a Body to Time.
120 x 110 cm
Printing with pigment ink on cotton Hahnemühle Photo Rag Barytha 315g paper
Photo Filipe BerndtIn 1988 I took a ‘double decision’ that radically transformed my relationship with photography: to stop producing new images and dedicate myself to the appropriation and re-reading of what I called ‘photographic residues’, limiting the photographic act to what I considered strictly necessary.
From here on emerged, not as a purpose but as a consequence, both a principle of economy in the production of new imaginaries, and the beginning of an investigation about the different life cycles that photographs have, according to their existence in the world of subjects and their representations. I thought that many of the photographs that I found on the verge of abandon asked for (and also deserved…) a new life, that is, some resignification or a new symbolic function.
I started with the vernacular, which seemed the most natural to me, revisiting and reusing images from family albums. Soon after, I was compelled to enter the magical territory of cinema and its direct relationship with the photographic device. Newly admitted to the post-graduation program at the School of Communications and Arts at USP, having cinema as my main area, the 35mm photograms discarded in the garbage of ECA’s editing room immediately became objects of scrutiny and desire.
The photogram isolated from its context is like a survivor that tells about the suspension of a time that has passed, which is revised (and edited), again, as phantasmagoria. If the phantasmagoria leaves no trace, as soon as the cinematographic device is turned off, the photogram is the proof of its existence. Through mechanisms of intertextuality with painting, advertising, art history and photography, there was in the photograms a myriad of possibilities for reading this ‘suspended time of time’, paraphrasing Maurício Lissovsky, ‘a time of unlimited duration, but determined to end’. The anti-cinema was a cinema in reverse.
Parallel to the frames transformed into large format images there was a small group of objects where movement was something invented or attributed, as if the suspension of time could happen from a collage of photographic images; however, the anti-cinema, here, was a humorous pastiche of what in the 19th century was the phantasmagoria that oscillated between photography and cinema.
Rosângela Rennó, 2022
92 x 155 cm
Pigment ink print on cotton paper Photo Rag Barytha 315g Photo Filipe Berndt
165 x 112 cm
Mineral pigment ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper 308g Photo Reproduction
70 x 70 x 12 cm
Convex mirror, sandblasted inverted phrase, painted bracket Photo Filipe Berndt
73 x 58 x 3,5 cm
Pigmented ink print on handmade marbled paper and wooden frame with metal nameplate
Photo Filipe BerndtNa série Seres notáveis do mundo, Rennó apropria-se das imagens dos bustos de gesso que pertencem à coleção do El Museo Canário (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Espanha). Esses bustos tinham como objetivo representar as distintas raças do globo, foram feitos entre 1840 e 1870, e adquiridos para integrar a Sala de Antropologia do museu. Daqueles homens mortos, restaram apenas as máscaras que foram transformadas em bustos de gesso, para um gabinete positivista de antropologia, depois foram imagens fotográficas desses bustos e, finalmente, fantasmas, sombras, espectros sobre as folhas de papel marmorizado artesanalmente.
79,5 x 59 x 3,5 cm
Print in pigmented ink on handmade marbled paper (72 x 50 cm) and wooden frame with metal nameplate
Photo Filipe Berndt“Throughout the exhibition, one may realize the way the absence of images and information favored the attribution of incomplete citizenship — take for example the forced anonymity in the data sheets of the plaster collection stored at El Museo Canario de Antropología (Las Palmas, Canary Islands). What would be the common ground of a Hindustan woman, a Rochet Island man and a Zanguebar boy? They appear to be “remarkable beings” just because they do not belong to whiteness. To create this 2019 series, Rennó uncovers the information gaps in one of the largest archaeological collections in the region. The artist takes busts meant to represent “different races of the world” and responds to the violence of “nameless” bodies by printing them on marble-textured paper, like a “skin” that bestows upon them the barest semblance of the grave, hence a right to memory (a “monument”).”
Excerpt from No Fim da Madrugada, by Lisette Lagnado
73 x 58 x 3,5 cm
Pigmented ink print on handmade marbled paper (65 x 50 cm) and wooden frame with metal nameplate. Printed by Cesar Barreto. Photo Filipe Berndt
195 x 70 x 20 cm
75 products from various brands displayed in a window, with glass and sandblasted adhesive
Photo Filipe BerndtA imortalidade ao nosso alcance [Immortality within our reach] aligns with the vocation of Rosângela Rennó’s work, reflecting on the role of expanded photography in the social construction of representations and memory. In the installation, 76 products from different brands are displayed in a showcase whose sandblasted glass offers some “peeping holes” into its interior. In each transparent part of the glass a product/ face appears. Each portrait-for-sale lets out some satisfaction, a smile, a relief or a pleasure. On the outside, the key to open the window reads: Immortality within our reach. The installation was produced on the occasion of Rennó’s panoramic exhibition at Pinacoteca Station, between 2021 and 2022.
195 x 70 x 20 cm
Photo Filipe Berndt
Variable dimentions
Gelatin and silver print Photo Filipe Berndt
Variable dimentions
Gelatin and silver print on paper Photo Filipe Berndt
180 x 100 cm (each)
Laminated digital photography (lightjet process) and mounted on PVC Photo Filipe Berndt
29 x 23 cm, 104 pages
Hand-painted book and framed book jacket / Book by Marcel Bigeard and Marc Flament (Paris: La Pensée Moderne, 1959). Photo Filipe Berndt
29 x 23 cm, 104 pages
Hand-painted book and framed book jacket / Book by Marcel Bigeard and Marc Flament (Paris: La Pensée Moderne, 1959). Photo Filipe Berndt “Aucune Bête au Monde” is a book published in 1959, composed of texts by then-French Colonel Marcel Bigeard and photos of Sergeant-Chief Marc Flament on Algeria’s long war for independence (1954-1962). Rennó made an intervention in the book with gray paint, erasing from the images any military man who was portrayed. The artist also eliminated, with cut-outs, the texts that identified the place where the images were captured. Rennó writes about the erasures: “The erasures in the images and the pages themselves are intended to suggest an aspect of universality in the documentation of a specific war.”
806 frames - 11 x 16 cm
Installation containing photographs printed in inkjet on cotton paper, written and stamped, and a manifest text in Portuguese and English. Photo Filipe Berndt Around 800 small red, white and black frames organize and classifies the two yearlong research carried out by Rosângela Rennó around images of monuments build in homage to Lenin. The classifications include a search for understanding de destiny of each monument after the end of the Soviet Union. Each collected image brings in itself notes on the history of each monument. They are, as expressed by Rennó in the text written by her to accompany the work: “notes on the process of collecting photos of Lenin statues on the internet”.
806 frames - 11 x 16 cm
Installation containing photographs printed in inkjet on cotton paper, written and stamped, and a manifest text in Portuguese and English. Photo Filipe Berndt Around 800 small red, white and black frames organize and classifies the two yearlong research carried out by Rosângela Rennó around images of monuments build in homage to Lenin. The classifications include a search for understanding de destiny of each monument after the end of the Soviet Union. Each collected image brings in itself notes on the history of each monument. They are, as expressed by Rennó in the text written by her to accompany the work: “notes on the process of collecting photos of Lenin statues on the internet”.
14 x 40 x 4 cm
Packs of Che cigarettes, Zippo-style lighter and Plexiglass boxes. Photo Filipe Berndt In the work, Rosângela Rennó organizes a collection of Che brand cigarette packs and a lighter with the image and name of the Marxist revolutionary Ernesto Guevara (1928 - 1967). All objects carry in their graphic identity the iconic image of Guevara recorded by Alberto Diaz “Korda,” on March 5, 1960, entitled “Heroic Guerrilla”. Che’s stylized image was used by designer Jim Fitzpatrick on a poster that sold 2 million copies in 6 months. Rennó raises the question: “Would Che, being a ruthless enemy of capitalism, object to the treatment and monetization of his image?” Regarding the use of the image by the cigarette brand, she writes: “Why would the image of a revolutionary leader end up illustrating a pack of cigarettes sold in various parts of the world? Industry profits may be damaging, even further draining the image, but even industry suffers from certain market determinations. So, we consumers are watching perverse actions, unconnected to both the universe to which that image belonged, and the industry itself that has benefited from it for many years. When some societies decide that a product is so harmful to humans that it justifies the insertion of explicit, visual and textual messages, the brand image ends up being reduced, eclipsed, until its complete disappearance”.
19,5 x 11 x 11,5 cm
Stereoscopic viewer from late 19th century and four Plexiglass plates, containing two texts from the Universal Archive project (1992 - ), in Portuguese and English Photo Filipe Berndt The work uses a three-dimensional optical photo viewing device, created in 1840, and replaces the images traditionally used on them for text plates from the Universal Archive project. Started by Rennó in 1992, the Universal Archive compiles journalistic texts that refers to photographic images. In 3D Exercise (transparency) the Universal Archive texts, applied to 3D technology, cause discomfort not only from the effort to “see” the texts with words that seem to float before your eyes, but also to convert them into images after reading them. Some photographs are easily recognizable or decipherable from the texts. Others, if unknown, will demand from the reader the mental exercise of construction or invention.
19,5 x 11 x 11,5 cm
Stereoscopic viewer from late 19th century and four Plexiglass plates, containing two texts from the Universal Archive project (1992 - ), in Portuguese and English Photo Filipe Berndt The work uses a three-dimensional optical photo viewing device, created in 1840, and replaces the images traditionally used on them for text plates from the Universal Archive project. Started by Rennó in 1992, the Universal Archive compiles journalistic texts that refers to photographic images. In 3D Exercise (transparency) the Universal Archive texts, applied to 3D technology, cause discomfort not only from the effort to “see” the texts with words that seem to float before your eyes, but also to convert them into images after reading them. Some photographs are easily recognizable or decipherable from the texts. Others, if unknown, will demand from the reader the mental exercise of construction or invention.
Variable dimentions
10 concertina/accordion format albums containing approximately 500 digital images in 42 pages. Hard cover covered with tissue; handwritten images printed in Hahnemühle Matt fibre paper 200 grs. Photo Ken Cheong
Variable dimentions
Enamel paint and adhesive vinyl plotter on wall Photo Edouard Fraipont
31 x 25 cm each
86 photopaintings made by Rennó from the appropriation of wedding photographs Photo Edouard Fraipont The series that lends its title to the exhibition, Nuptias, 2017, consists of 86 photo-paintings made by Rennó based on wedding photographs. The artist’s alterations are made with paint, objects, cuttings and recompositions, including interventions directly on the original photo-paintings from the region of Cariri, in Brazil’s Northeast. Besides referring to the plurality of affective unions without regard to belief, race, sexual orientation or any other convention, the artist revisits various icons of the culture of visuality, in both the Occident and the Orient. The photo-paintings and their titles make reference to the ceremonial (rice, frosting), pop culture (Batman & Robin, La Lucha), recent politics (“Bela, recatada e do lar” [Beautiful, maidenlike and homemaker], Femen), religion (Burkas, La cieguita) and social inequality (Chacina [Slaughter])
31 x 25 cm
Mixed media on photograph Photo Gabriela Carrera The series that lends its title to the exhibition, “Nuptias”, 2017, consists of 86 photo-paintings made by Rennó based on wedding photographs. The artist’s alterations are made with paint, objects, cuttings and recompositions, including interventions directly on the original photo-paintings from the region of Cariri, in Brazil’s Northeast. Besides referring to the plurality of affective unions without regard to belief, race, sexual orientation or any other convention, the artist revisits various icons of the culture of visuality, in both the Occident and the Orient. The photo-paintings and their titles make reference to the ceremonial (rice, frosting), pop culture (Batman & Robin, La Lucha), recent politics (“Bela, recatada e do lar” [Beautiful, maidenlike and homemaker], Femen), religion (Burkas, La cieguita) and social inequality (Chacina [Slaughter])
31 x 50 cm
Mixed media on photograph Photo Gabriela Carrera The series that lends its title to the exhibition, “Nuptias”, 2017, consists of 86 photo-paintings made by Rennó based on wedding photographs. The artist’s alterations are made with paint, objects, cuttings and recompositions, including interventions directly on the original photo-paintings from the region of Cariri, in Brazil’s Northeast. Besides referring to the plurality of affective unions without regard to belief, race, sexual orientation or any other convention, the artist revisits various icons of the culture of visuality, in both the Occident and the Orient. The photo-paintings and their titles make reference to the ceremonial (rice, frosting), pop culture (Batman & Robin, La Lucha), recent politics (“Bela, recatada e do lar” [Beautiful, maidenlike and homemaker], Femen), religion (Burkas, La cieguita) and social inequality (Chacina [Slaughter])
Variáveis [variable]
Engraved porcelain plates, acrylic and painted stainless steel hangers Photo Edouard Fraipont
20 x 20 x 7,5 cm (each)
Engraved porcelain plates, acrylic and painted stainless steel hangers Photo Edouard Fraipont The series “Bodas de Porcelana”, 2017, consists of a series of 20 porcelain objects, made in the style of decorative plates that are shown on the wall and celebrate the 20 years of the “Cerimônia do Adeus” series. Pairs of superimposed plates evidence their different provenances, formats, cultures and ages. On the side facing the spectator, Rennó engraved the title of the original work and a small icon of an automobile from the 1950s.
installation – twenty iron tables with switches and timers, twenty slide projectors, thirty-two digital slides, acrylic nameplates. A 6-minute soundtrack inspired by the Communist International, performed by Siri. Digital slides from images from the collection of Diario El Popular (1957 to 1973) belonging to the Centro de Fotografia (CdF) in Montevideo.
Photo Edouard Fraipont The work originally created for Rennó’s solo show at the Centro de Fotografia (CdF), of Montevideo (Uruguay), in 2011, entitled “Río-Montevideo” uses 14 slide projectors to present images made by photographer Aurelio Gonzalez between 1957 and 1973. In 1973, with the imminence of the military coup arrival of the military coup in Uruguay, Gonzalez gathered more than 40.000 photographic negatives he had made for the newspaper El Popular and hid them between the floors of a building in Montevideo. This material remained hidden for more than 33 years until it was found and finally recovered by the same photographer, in 2006. Submitted to a long process of restoration, classification and digitizing by the Núcleo de Fotografia de Montevidéu, these negatives reveal a certain “constructed amnesia” that pervades the recent history of various countries of Latin America. Rennó chose to present a small selection of these images through the lenses of the old slide projectors, which lend them a warm, foggy smoothness. In this case, the projectors are used in order to reintroduce these images into the present day in a more playful manner since they establish a direct link with the past, maintaining their symbolic value without, however, tying them to the tradition of the documentary. Besides the projections, activated by the observer, the context of the installation is enriched with the sound of the famous composition of the Communist International.
100 x 133 x 5 cm
Digital print, acrylic and lens Photo Edouard Fraipont In the series “Operação Aranhas/Arapongas/ Arapucas”, triptychs are formed based on the association of images made by three different photographers, at specific times and events. Twelve photographs were made by José Inacio Parente during the protest march known as the Passeata dos Cem mil, in Rio de Janeiro, on June 26, 1968. Rennó participates with twelve images made during the demonstration known as the Comício das Diretas Já, in Belo Horizonte, on February 24, 1984. The last twelve were made by Cia de Foto, at the protest called Movimento Passe Livre, in São Paulo, from June 17 through 20, 2013. Based on three historic moments – the Passeata dos Cem mil (1968) along with the Diretas Já (1984) and Movimento Passe Livre (2013) movements – the series deals with questions related to mass events. For instance, what makes a crowd change the world, or, at least, part of its histories? What transforms it into a flood that carries and drags everything, without measuring its intrinsic power that turns it into an unavoidable force, able to torment even the most unscrupulous executioner? The masses are made up of hundreds, thousands or millions of individuals who, generally, do not represent a great danger to the system when isolated. However, luckily or unluckily for us, each of them carries an important fragment of the monster’s chain of DNA, which is lost or recovered at another point of the chain, perpetuating the monster’s dynamics and maintaining it at its prime. Terrible and marvelous. Each photo is covered by a sheet of embossed tissue paper – as in the traditional interpages of old photograph albums and associated to two other images, realized in the two other events involved in the series. Camera lenses and filters will provide a look at faces in the crowd.
100 x 133 x 5 cm
Digital print, acrylic and lens Photo Edouard Fraipont In the series “Operação Aranhas/Arapongas/ Arapucas”, triptychs are formed based on the association of images made by three different photographers, at specific times and events. Twelve photographs were made by José Inacio Parente during the protest march known as the Passeata dos Cem mil, in Rio de Janeiro, on June 26, 1968. Rennó participates with twelve images made during the demonstration known as the Comício das Diretas Já, in Belo Horizonte, on February 24, 1984. The last twelve were made by Cia de Foto, at the protest called Movimento Passe Livre, in São Paulo, from June 17 through 20, 2013. Based on three historic moments – the Passeata dos Cem mil (1968) along with the Diretas Já (1984) and Movimento Passe Livre (2013) movements – the series deals with questions related to mass events. For instance, what makes a crowd change the world, or, at least, part of its histories? What transforms it into a flood that carries and drags everything, without measuring its intrinsic power that turns it into an unavoidable force, able to torment even the most unscrupulous executioner? The masses are made up of hundreds, thousands or millions of individuals who, generally, do not represent a great danger to the system when isolated. However, luckily or unluckily for us, each of them carries an important fragment of the monster’s chain of DNA, which is lost or recovered at another point of the chain, perpetuating the monster’s dynamics and maintaining it at its prime. Terrible and marvelous. Each photo is covered by a sheet of embossed tissue paper – as in the traditional interpages of old photograph albums and associated to two other images, realized in the two other events involved in the series. Camera lenses and filters will provide a look at faces in the crowd.
100 x 133 x 5 cm
Digital print, acrylic and lens Photo Edouard Fraipont In the series “Operação Aranhas/Arapongas/ Arapucas”, triptychs are formed based on the association of images made by three different photographers, at specific times and events. Twelve photographs were made by José Inacio Parente during the protest march known as the Passeata dos Cem mil, in Rio de Janeiro, on June 26, 1968. Rennó participates with twelve images made during the demonstration known as the Comício das Diretas Já, in Belo Horizonte, on February 24, 1984. The last twelve were made by Cia de Foto, at the protest called Movimento Passe Livre, in São Paulo, from June 17 through 20, 2013. Based on three historic moments – the Passeata dos Cem mil (1968) along with the Diretas Já (1984) and Movimento Passe Livre (2013) movements – the series deals with questions related to mass events. For instance, what makes a crowd change the world, or, at least, part of its histories? What transforms it into a flood that carries and drags everything, without measuring its intrinsic power that turns it into an unavoidable force, able to torment even the most unscrupulous executioner? The masses are made up of hundreds, thousands or millions of individuals who, generally, do not represent a great danger to the system when isolated. However, luckily or unluckily for us, each of them carries an important fragment of the monster’s chain of DNA, which is lost or recovered at another point of the chain, perpetuating the monster’s dynamics and maintaining it at its prime. Terrible and marvelous. Each photo is covered by a sheet of embossed tissue paper – as in the traditional interpages of old photograph albums and associated to two other images, realized in the two other events involved in the series. Camera lenses and filters will provide a look at faces in the crowd.
147 x 99 x 5 cm
Selenium toned gelatin-silver print on Ilford Multigrad IV on foamboard
Photo courtesy of artistLanterna mágica series is a set of photographs produced manually in photographic laboratory in silver paper/gelatin fiber-based. Inside the lab, during processing, the photos are exposed to a very intense and punctual light that affects the correct reproduction of the negative, as if a spot had consumed the represented landscape, like a black and inescapable hole. Each black & white negative used in the laboratory generated four different images, according to the intensity and size of the black hole produced on the surface of the photo paper during their exposure to light.
147 x 99 x 5 cm
Photograph on Ilford Multigrade IV silver/gelatin paper, with selenium turning, adhesive on foamboard. Photo Edouard Fraipont
21'10''
Single channel video, color, sound, resolution 1920x1080 and vinyl on wall Photo Video frame The Sanskrit word “sutra” means, literally, “a line that holds things together”, however, it refers also to an aphorism formed by a succession of specific concepts which, when united, originate moral or philosophical knowledge. Uyuni sutra was conceived and developed as an allegory of meditation, an exercise with the finality of interrupting the flow of thought, emptying and quieting the mind, as if it could become a serene, waveless lake. In the video, the monotonous landscape seen on the trip from the shores of the Salar up to the arrival to Incahuasi island, shot from the inside of a car with an handheld camera, was transformed into a kind of exercise where the spectator follows the artist ‘s effort to keep, horizontal and centered on the shot, the horizon line of the Uyuni — the largest salt flat in the world, located in Bolivia. The first attempt fails in just over two minutes. The second attempt yields several successful moments, in which a green guide-line — like those used in graphic editing softwares — appears, applied onto the landscape. The visual result of this exercise, upon the appearance of this guide-line, is somewhere between the aesthetic of the videogame and the layout of an airplane control panel, been turned 90 degrees — the horizon becoming a vertical line. The green guide-line becomes thicker only when there is perfect balance between the two halves of the image: the right, taken up by the apparently still sky and the left, by the salt that moves constantly, as united, harmonized, peaceful opposites.
75 x 26 x 40 cm (each table)
7 thuribles and 7 pots containing 8 aromatic resins (myrrh, frankincense, mastic, storax, copal, white pitch and Siam benzoin + Sumatran benzoin) on 7 tables. Photo Edouard Fraipont per fumum. Through the smoke + that which awakens sweet memories. Certain trees exude resins which, when solidified, are known as “incenses,” and which, when burned, generate extremely aromatic smoke. Since the dawn of man, the image of smoke – a thing that exists in between the material and the immaterial – has been associated with the spiritual, the divine. It is believed that smoke and its perfume foster a connection between the real world and the supernatural, between the material and the spiritual, between the human and the godly. Excerpt from the book espírito de tudo (Cobogó, 2017)
Variable dimentions
Installation consisting of 74 objects found and acquired at various street fairs Photo Edouard Fraipont The 74 objects that comprise the project “Menos-valia [leilão]” were found and acquired at various flea markets, and each bears its ‘denomination of origin’. There were different reasons behind the return to circulation and resale of these objects: wear and tear, theft and rejection, obsolescence, or else their owners simply lost interest and threw them in the garbage, from which they were recovered and returned to market. In being selected, recomposed, transformed and re-contextualized, these objects underwent successive aggregations of material and symbolic value prior to their final destiny, defined on December 9, 2010, when each of them was auctioned off at São Paulo’s 29th International Biennial. On acquiring an object, buyers were given certificates granting ownership to part of the project “Menos-valia [leilão]” and could include them in their art collections. In the field of ideas, “Menos-valia [leilão]” can also be understood as one of the contemporary practices most closely linked to current theories of ruinology, such as the “active recuperationism of transformation”, among other recently consolidated notions.
Variable dimentions
Installation consisting of 74 objects found and acquired at various street fairs Photo Edouard Fraipont The 74 objects that comprise the project “Menos-valia [leilão]” were found and acquired at various flea markets, and each bears its ‘denomination of origin’. There were different reasons behind the return to circulation and resale of these objects: wear and tear, theft and rejection, obsolescence, or else their owners simply lost interest and threw them in the garbage, from which they were recovered and returned to market. In being selected, recomposed, transformed and re-contextualized, these objects underwent successive aggregations of material and symbolic value prior to their final destiny, defined on December 9, 2010, when each of them was auctioned off at São Paulo’s 29th International Biennial. On acquiring an object, buyers were given certificates granting ownership to part of the project “Menos-valia [leilão]” and could include them in their art collections. In the field of ideas, “Menos-valia [leilão]” can also be understood as one of the contemporary practices most closely linked to current theories of ruinology, such as the “active recuperationism of transformation”, among other recently consolidated notions.
Variable dimentions
Installation consisting of 74 objects found and acquired at various street fairs Photo Edouard Fraipont The 74 objects that comprise the project “Menos-valia [leilão]” were found and acquired at various flea markets, and each bears its ‘denomination of origin’. There were different reasons behind the return to circulation and resale of these objects: wear and tear, theft and rejection, obsolescence, or else their owners simply lost interest and threw them in the garbage, from which they were recovered and returned to market. In being selected, recomposed, transformed and re-contextualized, these objects underwent successive aggregations of material and symbolic value prior to their final destiny, defined on December 9, 2010, when each of them was auctioned off at São Paulo’s 29th International Biennial. On acquiring an object, buyers were given certificates granting ownership to part of the project “Menos-valia [leilão]” and could include them in their art collections. In the field of ideas, “Menos-valia [leilão]” can also be understood as one of the contemporary practices most closely linked to current theories of ruinology, such as the “active recuperationism of transformation”, among other recently consolidated notions.
Variable dimentions
Installation consisting of 74 objects found and acquired at various street fairs Photo Edouard Fraipont The 74 objects that comprise the project “Menos-valia [leilão]” were found and acquired at various flea markets, and each bears its ‘denomination of origin’. There were different reasons behind the return to circulation and resale of these objects: wear and tear, theft and rejection, obsolescence, or else their owners simply lost interest and threw them in the garbage, from which they were recovered and returned to market. In being selected, recomposed, transformed and re-contextualized, these objects underwent successive aggregations of material and symbolic value prior to their final destiny, defined on December 9, 2010, when each of them was auctioned off at São Paulo’s 29th International Biennial. On acquiring an object, buyers were given certificates granting ownership to part of the project “Menos-valia [leilão]” and could include them in their art collections. In the field of ideas, “Menos-valia [leilão]” can also be understood as one of the contemporary practices most closely linked to current theories of ruinology, such as the “active recuperationism of transformation”, among other recently consolidated notions.
Variable dimentions
Installation consisting of 74 objects found and acquired at various street fairs Photo Edouard Fraipont The 74 objects that comprise the project “Menos-valia [leilão]” were found and acquired at various flea markets, and each bears its ‘denomination of origin’. There were different reasons behind the return to circulation and resale of these objects: wear and tear, theft and rejection, obsolescence, or else their owners simply lost interest and threw them in the garbage, from which they were recovered and returned to market. In being selected, recomposed, transformed and re-contextualized, these objects underwent successive aggregations of material and symbolic value prior to their final destiny, defined on December 9, 2010, when each of them was auctioned off at São Paulo’s 29th International Biennial. On acquiring an object, buyers were given certificates granting ownership to part of the project “Menos-valia [leilão]” and could include them in their art collections. In the field of ideas, “Menos-valia [leilão]” can also be understood as one of the contemporary practices most closely linked to current theories of ruinology, such as the “active recuperationism of transformation”, among other recently consolidated notions.
104,5 x 104,5 x 8 cm
11 digital prints on Plexiglas plates and one digital print on PVC plate, superposed, wood frame and stainless-steel screws Photo Rafael Cañas Onze bastiões e três portões, cada um com uma ponte elevadiça, pontuam a imponente muralha de pedra, de planta circular, construída pelos venezianos, que governaram a ilha de Chipre entre 1489 e 1571, para abrigar a capital. Os trabalhos começaram em 1567 e estavam quase finalizados quando os turcos cercaram e tomaram Nicosia em 1570. Hoje, a alta e maciça muralha e seus admiráveis bastiões em forma de coração resistem como um belo e impressionante exemplo da engenharia militar medieval. Onze anos foi o tempo de duração da última guerra civil vivida no Chipre, que culminou na cisão da ilha em dois países, mantidos separados, até hoje, pelo que é chamado de ‘último muro da Europa’. Quem sobreviveu a essa guerra raramente cruza a fronteira; quem não se recorda desse período parece não se dar conta de que a forma circular da muralha só se completa do outro lado da fronteira. Hoje, a divisão da ilha é um ‘tema tabu’ e a própria barricada/muro parece inexistir quando se pergunta a um cipriota sobre sua própria identidade ou sua nação. Onze são os desenhos ‘de memória’ feitos por habitantes de Nicosia Norte e Sul, a meu pedido e aplicados em transparência sobre a foto aérea da muralha, hoje engolida pela cidade que cresceu e ultrapassou o desenho original da fortaleza. A fotografia aérea é como a memória do autista que tem a capacidade de recordar-se de tudo, dentro do caos urbano, sem nenhuma seleção e mostra um desenho que permanece mais marcante do que o muro/barricada que o corta de ponta a ponta, dentro da malha sensível da cidade. O ser humano ‘normal’ não funciona assim; ao memorizar, faz seleções, estabelece hierarquias, esquece-se do conjunto e do contexto geral; guarda um detalhe, um recorte. Portanto, o desenho ‘de memória’ do cidadão comum de Nicosia mostra aquilo a que ele atribui mais relevância ou aquilo que ele conhece e reconhece, dentro de sua vivência pessoal e de seu contato com a cidade. Se o indivíduo só vê 5 dos 11 bastiões da muralha, talvez ignore que existem outros 6, do outro lado do muro. Ou talvez saiba de sua existência mas não lhes dê nenhuma importância. Rosângela Rennó, 2009-2010.
111'
Single channel video, color, sound, resolution 720x480 and vinyl lettering text applied on wall. Photo Video frame “Bouk [Ring/loop]” (2006-2009) images were captured during a complete turn around the Reunion Island (a French department overseas in the Indic Ocean) from the inside of a car in 2006. The video was edited only three years later. This late edition represents a revisit to that journey around the island, backwards, as if the idea of return and its eternity was only made possible through reversing sound and image in an endless loop. The sequences of images were extended and slowed, and the image layer was toned with the basic colors of printing (cyan, magenta and yellow). This overlapping procedure has generated a moving image with an unlikely variety of vague and fleeing greys and whites. The almost mantric sound created from the reversion of Daniel Waro’s songs, which are sang in Creolle language from the Reunion Island, suggests an intricate lament accompanying the images and resisting to the “black and white” disappearing – in the same way as the Creolle language has always smartly resisted the conqueror’s language domination.
40 x 30 cm (each)
Photography in silver/gelatin paper and painted with dry pastels by Jean Alves in Juazeiro do Norte (Ceará, Brazil) Photo Reproduction To create the series “Carrazeda + Cariri”, Rennó has collected from the web several portraits of men living in Carrazeda de Ansiães, a small village in Portugal. This community seems destined to disappear due to the lack of women to wed. These portraits were first enlarged in conventional photographic paper and later sent to 4 “photopainters” of Cariri region: Masters Abdom, Demontier, Jean e Cícero, of Juazeiro do Norte and also one photopainter from Fortaleza, Master Júlio dos Santos. They’ve painted the photographs according to the traditional technique of portrait painting. Photopainting immortalizes the portraits of these isolated men in Carrazeda as a way to crystallize a unique and terminal situation, a social disfunction apparently unsolvable. The five photopainters have retouched the same 18 portraits but, yet, each portrait is different from the other because each craftsman applies their own distinct trace upon the original portrait, what multiplies the aesthetic possibilities of each subject portrayed. They’ve transformed each of them into a sort of “singular plural”. It is as if Cariri replied to Carrazeda and to this social disfunction with a provocation on celibacy and on the very limit situation of the portrait’s end.
Image: 57,7 x 41,9 x 15,8 cm / Camera: 20 x 18,4 x 5 cm
Photographic print and Nikon F2 analogic camera Photo Galeria Vermelho “I invited 43 professional photographers to photograph the Christ the Redeemer monument in Rio de Janeiro using mechanical cameras of different formats that I have collected over the last fifteen years. The cameras range from a 4x5 plate camera from the beginning of the twentieth century to a 35mm reflex camera from the 1980s. The cameras were used for the last time; they were then sealed. The photographs were edited by their authors and myself. The project “The last photo” [A última foto] consists of 43 diptychs, each pairing the cameras with the last photo they registered. So long, photography” – Rosângela Rennó
Image: 52,9 x 77,9 x 9,9 cm / Camera: 13,9 x 20,8 cm
Photographic print and Kodak 35 analogic camera Photo Galeria Vermelho “I invited 43 professional photographers to photograph the Christ the Redeemer monument in Rio de Janeiro using mechanical cameras of different formats that I have collected over the last fifteen years. The cameras range from a 4x5 plate camera from the beginning of the twentieth century to a 35mm reflex camera from the 1980s. The cameras were used for the last time; they were then sealed. The photographs were edited by their authors and myself. The project “The last photo” [A última foto] consists of 43 diptychs, each pairing the cameras with the last photo they registered. So long, photography” – Rosângela Rennó
Image: 67,8 x 67,8 x 12,4 cm / Camera: 16,9 x 14,4 cm
Photographic print and Rolleiflex Automat 4 analogic camera Photo Galeria Vermelho “I invited 43 professional photographers to photograph the Christ the Redeemer monument in Rio de Janeiro using mechanical cameras of different formats that I have collected over the last fifteen years. The cameras range from a 4x5 plate camera from the beginning of the twentieth century to a 35mm reflex camera from the 1980s. The cameras were used for the last time; they were then sealed. The photographs were edited by their authors and myself. The project “The last photo” [A última foto] consists of 43 diptychs, each pairing the cameras with the last photo they registered. So long, photography” – Rosângela Rennó
Image: 67,8 x 67,8 x 12 cm / Camera: 20 x 18 x 12 cm
Photographic print and Yashica Mat 124B analogic camera Photo Galeria Vermelho “I invited 43 professional photographers to photograph the Christ the Redeemer monument in Rio de Janeiro using mechanical cameras of different formats that I have collected over the last fifteen years. The cameras range from a 4x5 plate camera from the beginning of the twentieth century to a 35mm reflex camera from the 1980s. The cameras were used for the last time; they were then sealed. The photographs were edited by their authors and myself. The project “The last photo” [A última foto] consists of 43 diptychs, each pairing the cameras with the last photo they registered. So long, photography” – Rosângela Rennó
Image: 46,8 x 92,9 x 7,8 cm / Camera: 13,3 x 16,3 cm
Photographic print and Rio-400 analogic camera Photo Galeria Vermelho “I invited 43 professional photographers to photograph the Christ the Redeemer monument in Rio de Janeiro using mechanical cameras of different formats that I have collected over the last fifteen years. The cameras range from a 4x5 plate camera from the beginning of the twentieth century to a 35mm reflex camera from the 1980s. The cameras were used for the last time; they were then sealed. The photographs were edited by their authors and myself. The project “The last photo” [A última foto] consists of 43 diptychs, each pairing the cameras with the last photo they registered. So long, photography” – Rosângela Rennó
Image: 46 x 63 x 14,4 cm / Camera 12,9 x 18,5 x 14 cm
Photographic print and Kapsa analogic camera Photo Galeria Vermelho “I invited 43 professional photographers to photograph the Christ the Redeemer monument in Rio de Janeiro using mechanical cameras of different formats that I have collected over the last fifteen years. The cameras range from a 4x5 plate camera from the beginning of the twentieth century to a 35mm reflex camera from the 1980s. The cameras were used for the last time; they were then sealed. The photographs were edited by their authors and myself. The project “The last photo” [A última foto] consists of 43 diptychs, each pairing the cameras with the last photo they registered. So long, photography” – Rosângela Rennó
171 x 110 cm
Digital Lightjet print, laminated and mounted on Masonite Photo Reproduction
38 x 33 x 5 cm
Oxidized zinc plate on red velvet and foam Photo Galeria Vermelho
190 x 140 x 8 cm
Digital print on silk and aluminum
Photo Edouard FraipontConsisting of six digital prints on pure silk organza, the series Insólidos [Unsolid] (2014) was created on the basis of four images. In the series, Rennó lends continuity to her research into the uncommon aspect of family photographs (which in 2005 gave rise to the series Frutos Estranhos), emphasizing the notion of how the perception of the images is altered when they are displayed on different and unusual supports. Insólidos reveals images of mysterious places or of curious actions printed on various layers of pure silk organza, giving rise to a three-dimensional effect through superposition. The artist creates an interplay between transparency and opaqueness, between the flat surface of the traditional/ analog photographs and the “photographic body,” which nowadays, in the digital era, is bereft of volume.
Rosângela Rennó’s Wedding Landscape (1996) is made up of layers of large sheets of plexiglass, to which the artist glued strips of negatives she retrieved from a wedding photography studio in Havana in 1994. Before the work went on view in Chosen Memories, a survey of Latin American contemporary art currently on view at MoMA, our photography conservators made a routine assessment of the work’s condition. What they found—and the best way to treat it—turned out to be anything but routine.
“Materials of film are generally held in an archive. So they’re typically not put on display,” explains Craig Kamrath, a photography conservation fellow, “But in this instance, the film is what you’re there to look at, these strips of negatives.”
Photography conservator Lee Ann Daffner was baffled: “When I first saw this work, I didn’t know what to think, because we had so many questions.” For one, there was a white, powdery substance appearing throughout the layers of plexiglass. Was it mold, or the dreaded “plexi disease” that can occur when a piece of plexiglass abrades, or something else? Daffner and Kamrath worked with conservation scientist Catherine H. Stephens and conservation science fellow Kyna Biggs to take samples and analyze them. But then another problem presented itself: these negatives, made of cellulose acetate, have a limited shelf life before they begin degrading. Thorough detective work needed to be done to determine the age of the negatives and how much acetic acid they were off-gassing, a sign of their decay. And was the plexiglass helping or hurting their condition?
“We’re right on the doorstep with this artwork,” Kamrath said. The discoveries are constantly unfolding in our latest episode of Conservation Stories.
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The comments and opinions expressed in this video are those of the speaker alone, and do not represent the views of The Museum of Modern Art, its personnel, or any artist.
Rosângela Rennó’s work is marked by the appropriation of discarded images found in flea markets and street fairs, as well as by the investigation of the relationship between memory and oblivion. In her photographs, objects, videos or installations, she works with family albums and images obtained from public or private archives. She is also dedicated to the creation of artist-books. The artist graduated in Fine Arts from Escola Guignard and in Architecture from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. She also holds a PhD in Arts from the School of Communications and Arts at USP.
In 2023, Rennó is awarded the Woman in Motion 2023 prize with the solo show Sur Les Ruines de la Photographie during the Le Rencontres de’Arles festival. The artist has had solo exhibitions in important institutions such as Estação Pinacoteca (São Paulo, 2021), Museum Für Angewandte Kunst Köln MAKK, (Cologne, 2021), Instituto Moreira Salles (Rio de Janeiro, 2017/2018), Photographers’ Gallery (London, 2016), Centro de Arte Moderna CAM – Fundação Gulbenkian (Lisbon, 2012), Prefix Institute Contemporary Art (Toronto, 2008), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil CCBB (Rio de Janeiro, 2003), Museu de Arte da Pampulha (Belo Horizonte, 2002), Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA (Los Angeles, 1996) and De Appel Foundation (Amsterdam, 1995).
Institutional group exhibitions also include Le Supermarché des images, Jeu de Paume (Paris, 2020), Pan y Circo: Appease, Distract, Disrupt, Another Space (New York, 2019), Confusing Public and Private, The 3rd Beijing Photo Biennial, CAFA Art Museum, (Beijing, 2018), Autophoto, Fondation Cartier (Paris, 2017), Intense Proximity – La Triennale de Paris, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2012), 22nd and 29th São Paulo’s International Biennial (1994 and 2010), Elle@centrepompidou – Artistes femmes dans les collections from the National Museum of Modern Art (Paris, 2010), ArtesMundi 3, Wales Museum of Art (Cardiff, 2008), Brazilian Art Panorama, Museum of Modern Art (São Paulo, 2005), Brazilian Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), Aperto93, 45th Venice Biennale (1993), among others.
Rosângela Rennó’s works now belong to the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Center Georges Pompidou, Paris; Inhotim Contemporary Art Center, Belo Horizonte; Gulbenkian-CAM Foundation, Lisbon; Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection / Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro; Itaú Cultural Collection, São Paulo; SESC São Paulo Collection; Guggenheim Museum, New York; São Paulo Museum of Art MASP; Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid; Pampulha Art Museum, Belo Horizonte; Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo; Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art / MOMA, New York; National Museum of Women in the Arts NMWA, Washington; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and Tate Modern, London.
Rosângela Rennó’s work is marked by the appropriation of discarded images found in flea markets and street fairs, as well as by the investigation of the relationship between memory and oblivion. In her photographs, objects, videos or installations, she works with family albums and images obtained from public or private archives. She is also dedicated to the creation of artist-books. The artist graduated in Fine Arts from Escola Guignard and in Architecture from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. She also holds a PhD in Arts from the School of Communications and Arts at USP.
In 2023, Rennó is awarded the Woman in Motion 2023 prize with the solo show Sur Les Ruines de la Photographie during the Le Rencontres de’Arles festival. The artist has had solo exhibitions in important institutions such as Estação Pinacoteca (São Paulo, 2021), Museum Für Angewandte Kunst Köln MAKK, (Cologne, 2021), Instituto Moreira Salles (Rio de Janeiro, 2017/2018), Photographers’ Gallery (London, 2016), Centro de Arte Moderna CAM – Fundação Gulbenkian (Lisbon, 2012), Prefix Institute Contemporary Art (Toronto, 2008), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil CCBB (Rio de Janeiro, 2003), Museu de Arte da Pampulha (Belo Horizonte, 2002), Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA (Los Angeles, 1996) and De Appel Foundation (Amsterdam, 1995).
Institutional group exhibitions also include Le Supermarché des images, Jeu de Paume (Paris, 2020), Pan y Circo: Appease, Distract, Disrupt, Another Space (New York, 2019), Confusing Public and Private, The 3rd Beijing Photo Biennial, CAFA Art Museum, (Beijing, 2018), Autophoto, Fondation Cartier (Paris, 2017), Intense Proximity – La Triennale de Paris, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2012), 22nd and 29th São Paulo’s International Biennial (1994 and 2010), Elle@centrepompidou – Artistes femmes dans les collections from the National Museum of Modern Art (Paris, 2010), ArtesMundi 3, Wales Museum of Art (Cardiff, 2008), Brazilian Art Panorama, Museum of Modern Art (São Paulo, 2005), Brazilian Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), Aperto93, 45th Venice Biennale (1993), among others.
Rosângela Rennó’s works now belong to the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Center Georges Pompidou, Paris; Inhotim Contemporary Art Center, Belo Horizonte; Gulbenkian-CAM Foundation, Lisbon; Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection / Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro; Itaú Cultural Collection, São Paulo; SESC São Paulo Collection; Guggenheim Museum, New York; São Paulo Museum of Art MASP; Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid; Pampulha Art Museum, Belo Horizonte; Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo; Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art / MOMA, New York; National Museum of Women in the Arts NMWA, Washington; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and Tate Modern, London.
Rosângela Rennó
1962. Belo Horizonte
Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro
Solo Exhibitions
2024
– Rosângela Rennó. Living Things. Breda Photo Festival 2024 – Grote Kerke – Breda – Holanda
– Rosângela Rennó. Práticas de turismo transcendental – Coleção Moraes-Barbosa – São Paulo – Brasil
2023
– Rosângela Rennó. Sur les ruines de la photographie. Prêmio Woman in Motion 2023 – La Mécanique Générale – Arles – França
2021
– Rosângela Rennó. Pequena Ecologia da Imagem – Estação Pinacoteca – São Paulo – Brasil
– Rosângela Rennó. Eaux des Colonies – Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln [MAKK] – Colônia – Alemanha
2019
– Documento Monumento | Monumento Documento- Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Rosângela Rennó. Persistent Image – Mor Charpentier – Paris – França
– Rosângela Rennó. Good Apples/Bad Apples (un documento monumento) – MUNTREF Centro de Arte Contemporáneo – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– Rosângela Rennó. Espelho Diário – Galeria Vermelho (Sala Antonio) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Rosângela Rennó. Good apples/bad apples – Cristina Guerra Contemporay Art – Lisboa – Portugal
2018
– Rosângela Rennó: Vera Cruz – Pinacoteca do Estado – São Paulo – Brasil
2017
– Rosângela Rennó: Rio Utópico – Instituto Moreira Salles [IMS] – Rio de Janerio – Brasil
– Rosângela Rennó: Nuptias – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Rosângela Rennó: Vera Cruz – Sala Antonio – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2016
– Rosângela Rennó : O Espírito de Tudo – Oi Futuro (Flamengo) – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Paisagens Fugidias Ciclo 1: Rosangela Rennó – Imagem de Sobrevivência – Centro Universitário Maria Antonia – São Paulo – Brasil
– Rosângela Rennó. Río-Montevideo – The Photographers’ Gallery – Londres – Inglaterra
2015
– Insólidos – Galeria Cristina Guerra – Lisboa – Portugal
2014
– Rosângela Rennó – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Rosangela Rennó – Todo aquello que no está en las imágenes – Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM) – Las Palmas de Gran Canária
– Círculo Mágico – Fundação Eva Klabin – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
2013
– Projeto Educandaros – DAROS Latinamerica – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Menos-Valia [Leilão] – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2012
– Frutos Estranhos – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian – Lisboa – Portugal
– Strange Fruits – Fotomuseum Winterthur – Winterthur – Suíça
2011
– Notas de viagem do turista transcendental – Galeria da Caixa – Curitiba – Brasil
– Rio-Montevideo – Centro Municipal de Fotografia (CMDF)- Montevidéu – Uruguai
2010
-Forma, conteúdo e poesia – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
-Fiebre, basura y poesia – La Fabrica – Madri – Espanha
2009
– Ring – Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art – Nicosia – Chipre
– Corpo da Alma [O Estado do Mundo] – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Tudo aquilo que a nossa civilização rejeita, pisa e mija em cima, serve para a poesia – Cristina Guerra – Lisboa – Portugal
– Óscar Muñoz y Rosângela Rennó. Crónicas de la ausencia – Museo Rufino Tamayo – Cidade do México – México
2008
– The Last Photo – Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art – Toronto – Canadá
2007
– Brèd ek[t] chocolat – Festival Vidéoformes – Galerie La Chapelle – Clermont-Ferrand – França
– Espelho Diário – Festival Vidéoformes – Hotel Fontfreyde – Clermont-Ferrand – França
– La Fabrica – PhotoEspaña – Madrid – Espanha
– A Última Foto – Festival FotoRio – Caixa Cultural – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
2006
– Frutos estranhos – Galeria Arthur Fidalgo – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– A Última Foto – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Rosângela Rennó –Museu de Arte Moderna Aluísio Magalhães [MAMAM] – Recife – Brasil
2005
– Espelho Diário – Passage De Desir Festival d’ Automne – Paris – França
– Corpo da Alma/Apagamentos – Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art – Lisboa – Portugal
– Rosângela Rennó – Casa da Ribeira – Natal – Brasil
2004
– O Arquivo Universal e outros arquivos – Foto Arte 2004 – Espaço Cultural Contemporâneo ECCO – Brasília – Brasil
– Corpo da Alma – Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Experiência de Cinema – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2003
– Daily Mirror – Lombard Freid Fine Arts – Nova York – EUA
– Layed Down Little Balls [Billboard project] – Galeria de la Raza – San Francisco – EUA
– O Arquivo Universal e Outros Arquivos –Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil [CCBB] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Ceremonia del Adiós – PhotoEspaña 03 – Casa de América – Madri – Brasil
– Rosângela Rennó – Galeria Fortes Vilaça – São Paulo – Brasil
2002
– Diálogo Vera Cruz – Alpendre Casa de Arte – Pesquisa e Produção – Fortaleza – Brasil
2001
– Ovación y Silencio – Galeria Juana de Aizpuru – Madri – Espanha
– Mad Boy at Alexanderplatz – Denkzeichen 9 – Alexanderplatz – Berlim – Alemanha
– Espelho Diário – Projeto Interferências – Museu do Chiado – Lisboa – Portugal
– Rosângela Rennó- Instituto Tomie Ohtake – São Paulo – Brasil
2000
– Galeria Módulo –Lisboa – Portugal
1999
– Vulgo [Alias] – Australian Centre for Photography – Sydney – Austrália
1998
– Vulgo [Alias] – Lombard Freid Fine Arts – Nova York – EUA
– Vulgo [Alias] – Galeria Camargo Vilaça – São Paulo – Brasil
– Parede Cega (cem retratos) – Projeto Parede do MAM-SP – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
1997
– Galeria Luis Adelantado – Valencia – Espanha
1996
– Cicatriz – The Museum of Contemporary Art – Los Angeles – EUA
1995
– In Oblivionem (no landScape) – De Appel Foundation – Amsterdam – Holanda
– Hipocampo – Galeria Camargo Vilaça – São Paulo – Brasil
1994
– Humorais – Galeria de Arte do IBEU Copacabana – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Realismo Fantástico – Galeria de Arte do IBEU Madureira – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
1991
– A Identidade em Jogo – CCSP – Centro Cultural São Paulo – Pavilhão da Bienal de São Paulo (1992); Galeria Macunaíma – Instituto Brasileiro de Arte e Cultura – Rio de Janeiro (1992) – Brasil
1989
– Anti-cinema – Veleidades Fotográficas – Centro de Arte Corpo – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
Group Exhibitions
2024
– Rosângela Rennó. Lanterna Mágica – Mirante – SP-Arte Rotas Brasileiras – Arca – São Paulo – Brasil
– A Fotografia na Coleção de Arte da Cidade – Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– A Vingança do Arquivo – Casa de Cultura do Parque – São Paulo – Brasil
– Brasília. A Arte da Democracia. FGV Arte – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– 621 e todas nós. Mulheres artistas na Coleção do Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz – Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (IFF) – Ribeirão Preto – Brasil
2023
– No Fim da Madrugada – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Narrativas em Processo: Livros de Artista na Coleção Itaú Cultural – Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– O Tom dos Tempos – Galeria Bolsa de Arte – Porto Alegre – Brasil
– Casa no céu – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Histórias de uma Coleção. Arte Moderna e Contemporânea do CAM – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian – Lisboa – Portugal
– The Square – Casa de Vidro Lina Bo Bardi – São Paulo – Brasil
– Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond – Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) – Nova York – EUA
2022
– Arte pela vida das mulheres – Paço Imperial – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Outras Lembranças, Outros Enredos – Cordoaria Nacional – Lisboa – Portugal
– A Parábola do Progresso – Sesc Pompéia – São Paulo – Brasil
– Livros de Artista na Coleção Itaú Cultural [exposição virtual] – www.livrosdeartista.itaucultural.org.br
– Necrobrasiliana – Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – Recife – Brasil
– Imageless Films – Anthology Film Archives – Nova York – EUA
– Parada 7. Arte em resistência – Centro Municipal de Artes Hélio Oiticica – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Histórias Brasileiras – Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand [MASP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Lugar comum – Museu de Arte Contemporânea [MAC] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Das Coisas Políticas e as Políticas das Coisas – Museu de Arte Moderna Aloisio Magalhães [MAMAM] – Recife – Brasil
– Lenin Was a Mushroom. Moving Images in the 1990s – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp – Antuérpia – Bélgica
– Necrobrasiliana – Museu Paranaense – Curitiba – Brasil
– Lugar comum – Museu de Arte Contemporânea [MAC] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Coleção Sartori — A arte contemporânea habita Antônio Prado – Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul [MARGS] – Porto Alegre – Brasil
2021
– Eaux des Colonies. Photoszene United Festival 2021. Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln [MAKK] – Colônia – Alemanha
– Imaginante de Minas, século 20 – Memorial Vale – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– CA2M Dialect – Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo – Madri – Espanha
– Gráficografia – Museu Histórico Abílio Barreto – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Transgressions, Women Who Question – Part I (digital) – vortic.art
– Supermarket of Images – Red Brick Art Museum – Pequim – China
– Arte, substantivo feminino – Parede Gentil – A gentil Carioca! – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– 1991-2021: Arte Contemporânea Brasileira na Coleção Andrea e José Olympio Pereira – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil [CCBB] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Língua Solta – Museu da Língua Portuguesa – São Paulo – Brasil
2020
– Transbordar. Transgressões do Bordado na Arte – Sesc Pinheiros – São Paulo – Brasil
– Pinacoteca: Acervo – Pina_Luz – Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Dia, Noite, Noite. Coleção Andréa e José Olympio Pereira – Galpão da Lapa – São Paulo – Brasil
– Tools for Utopia. Selected Works from Daros Latinamerica Collection – Kunstmuseum Bern – Berna – Suíça
– Casa Carioca – Museu de Arte do Rio [MAR] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Clube de Colecionadores de Fotografia do MAM – 20 anos – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM SP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– À toi appartient le regard – Musée du Quai Branly – Paris – França
– Le supermarché des Images – Jeu de Paume – Paris – França
– Canções de um passado esquecido – Instituto Tomie Ohtake [ITO] – São Paulo – Brasil
2019
– Ambages – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Pan y Circo: Appease, Distract, Disrupt. Another Space – Nova York -EUA
– ¿Algo que declarar? – 10 años de Tijuana – La Rural – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– No habrá nunca una puerta. Estás a dentro. Obras de la coleção Teixeria de Freitas – Santander Art Gallery – Madri – Espanha
– SEGUNDA-FEIRA, 6 DE JUNHO DE 2019 – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Arte Naïf – Nenhum museu a menos – Parque Lage – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Lost and Found: imagining new worlds – LASALLE College of the Arts – Institute of Contemporary Art of Singapore – Singapura
– Passado/Futuro/Presente: Arte contemporânea brasileira no acervo do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. Museu de Arte
Moderna de São Paulo [MAM SP], São Paulo, Brasil
– Roots to Routes – Permanent Collection Galleries – National Museum of Women in the Arts – Washington DC – EUA
2018
– Mulheres na coleção do MAR – Museu de Arte do Rio [MAR] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Boundary Lines – Griffith University Art Museum – South Brisbane – Austrália
– Photobiennale International Festival – Thessaloniki Center of Contemporary Art – Thessaloniki – Grécia
– Confusing Public and Private – The Third Beijing Photo Biennial – The Culture Industry Center of Beizhen – Pequim – China
– Arte, Democracia e Utopia – Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– MAM 70: MAM e MAC USP – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM SP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Arte tem gênero? Mulheres na Coleção de Arte da Cidade – Centro Cultural São Paulo (CCSP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Paradoxo(s) da Arte Contemporânea: diálogos entre os acervos do MAC USP e Paço das Artes – MAC USP – São Paulo – Brasil
– MitoMotim – Galpão VB – São Paulo – Brasil
– Unfinished Portrait – Mor Charpentier – Paris – França
– The Matter of Photography in the Americas – Cantor Center for Visual Arts – Stanford – EUA
2017
– Brasil: de 1500 a 2013 & Entre documentário e ficção – Cine Jóia – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Potência e Adversidade. Arte da América Latina nas coleções em Portugal – Museu de Lisboa – Lisboa – Portugal
– Vivemos na melhor cidade da América do Sul – Fundação Iberê Camargo – Porto Alegre – Brasil
– Continua Sphères ENSEMBLE – Le Centquatre – Paris – Paris – França
– Bienal Sur_Trazas Simultáneas – Espacio Cultural de la Embajada del Brasil – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– Past/Future/Present: Contemporary Brazilian Art from the Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo – Phoenix Art Museum – Phoenix – EUA
– Modos de Ver o Brasil: Itaú Cultural 30 Anos – OCA – São Paulo – Brasil
– Autophoto – Fondation Cartier pu l’art contemporain – Paris – França
2016
– Coletiva – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Vivemos na melhor cidade da América do Sul – Átomos – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Versus – Palazzo Santa Margherita – Modena – Itália
– O Útero do Mundo – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Os muitos e o um: a arte contemporânea brasileira na coleção de José Olympio e Andrea Pereira – Instituto Tomie Ohtake (ITO) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Clube de Gravura: 30 anos – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Reparative aesthetics: Rosângela Rennó and Fiona Pardington – Griffith University Art Gallery – Camperdown – Austrália
– Yoko Ono. Dream Come True – MALBA – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– Coletiva – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Coleção Joaquim Paiva – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM RJ] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Caleidoscopio y Rompecabezas. Latinoamérica em la Collecion MUSAC – CAAM Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno – Canárias
– Lupa – Ensaios Audiovisuais – Museu de Artes e Ofícios – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Memórias inapagáveis — um olhar histórico no Acervo Videobrasil – Laboratorio Arte Alameda – Cidade do México – México
– Space to Dream: Recent Art from South America – Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki – Auckland – Nova Zelândia
– El Ordem Natural de las Cosas – Uma Exposición com Obras de la Colleción Jumex – Museo Jumex – Cidade do México – Mèxico
2015
– Coleções 10 – Galeria Luisa Strina – São Paulo – Brasil
– Fotos contam Fatos – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Uma coleção particular: Arte contemporânea no acervo da Pinacoteca – Pinacoteca do Estado – São Paulo – Brasil
– Quarta-feria de cinzas – Parque Lage – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Voces – Latin American Photography 1980 – 2015 – Michael Hoppen Gallery – Londres – Inglaterra
– Sense of Doubt: Against Forgetfulness – Museum Angewandte Kunst – Frankfurt – Alemanha
– Álbum de Família – Centro Cultural Helio Oiticica – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Une histoire, art, architecture et design, des années 80 à aujourd’hui – Centre Pompidou – Paris – França
– Strange World. Opere dalla Collezione – Fondazione Fotografia Modena – Modena – Itália
– Ficções – Caixa Cultural RJ – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Reparative aesthetics: Rosângela Rennó and Fiona Pardington – University Art Gallery – Sidnei – Austrália
– Memórias Imborrables – Museu de Arte Latino-Americana de Buenos Aires (MALBA) – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– Sobre o que se desenha – Museu de Arte da Pampulha – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Tarsila e Mulheres Modernas no Rio – Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– The Poetry In Between: South-South – Goodman Gallery – Cape Town – África do Sul
2014
– The Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award – IMA Concept Store – Toquio – Japãp
– Afetividades Eletivas – Centro Cultural Minas Tênis Clube – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Fleeting Imaginaries – CIFO Grants & Commissions Program Recipients – CIFO – Miami – EUA
– Memórias Inapagáveis – SESC Pompéia – São Paulo – Brasil
– Verbo 2014. Mostra de Performance Arte (10ª ed.) – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– De Ultramar – The Pipe Factory – Glasgow – Irlanda
– ¿Cuándo empieza el arte contemporráneo?- ArteBA 2014 – La Rural – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– América Latina, 1960-2013 – Museu Amparo – Puebla – México
– Unbound: Contemporary Art After Frida Kahlo – Museu of Contemporary Art – Chicago – EUA
– Fotografia Transversa – Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos – Porto Alegre – Brasil
– Poder Provisório – Sala Paulo Figueiredo – MAM SP – São Paulo – Brasil
– A tara por livros ou a tara de papel – Galeria Bergamin – São Paulo – Brasil
– ICA@50 Pleasing Artists and Public since 1963 – Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) – Philadelphia – EUA
– Cruzamentos: Contemporary Brazilian Art – Wexner Center for the Arts – Columbus – EUA
– 140 Caracteres – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
2013
– FotoBienal MASP – Museu Oscar Niemeyer [MON] – Curitiba – Brasil
– América Latina, 1960-2013 – Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain – Paris – França
– 18º Festival de arte Contemporânea_Videobrasil [30 Anos Panoramas do Sul] – SESC Pompéia – São Paulo – Brasil
– ExpoProjeção 1973-2013 – SESC Pinheiros – São Paulo – Brasil
– Arquivo Vivo – Paço das Artes – São Paulo – Brasil
– 30 X Bienal: Transformações na Arte Brasileira da 1ª à 30ª edição – Pavilhão da Bienal – São Paulo – Brasil
– Cães sem Plumas – Galeria Nara Roesler – São Paulo – Brasil
– The Itinerant Languages of Photography – Princeton Art Museum – Princeton – EUA
– Suspicious Minds – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Coleção Itaú de Fotografia Brasileira – Fundação Clovis Salgado – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Elles: mulheres artistas na coleção do Centro Pompidou – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Arte Contemporânea Brasileira – Galeria Multiarte – Fortaleza – Brasil
– Limites do Imaginário – Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos – Sala dos Pomares – Porto Alegre – Brasil
– O enunciado em questão – Laboratório Curatorial [SPArte 2013] – Pavilhão da Bienal de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil. 2013
– Coleção Itaú de Fotografia Brasileira – Instituto Tomie Ohtake – São Paulo – Brasil
– Coletiva – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Circuitos Cruzados: o Centre Pompidou encontra o MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– MAC 50: doações recentes 1 – Museu de Arte Contemporânea [MAC Ibirapuera] – São Paulo – Brasil
2012
– Foro Sur Cáceres 2012 – Palácio de La Isla – Cáceres – Portugal
– OC Collects – Orange County Museum of Art – Newport Beach – EUA
– Expansivo – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – SP – Brasil
– Gravity & Disgrace – Centro Galego de Arte Contemporânea – Santiago de Compostela – Espanha
– BESPhoto 2012 – Estação Pinacoteca – São Paulo – Brasil
– Coleção Itaú de Fotografia Brasileira – Paço Imperial – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– The Tenth Parallel. Contemporary Photography from India to South America – Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio de Modena – Modena – Itália
– Inventário da Pele – SIM Galeria- Curitiba – PR – Brasil
– Gravura em campo expandido – Pinacoteca do Estado – São Paulo – Brasil
– BESPhoto 2012 – Museu Coleção Berardo – Lisboa – Portugal
– Coleção Pirelli / MASP Fotografia [19ª edição] – Museu de Arte de São Paulo [MASP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– LaTriennale 2012: Intense Proximity – Palais de Tokio – Paris -França
– Eloge du vertige: photographies de la Collection Itaú – Maison Européenne de la Photographie – Paris – França
– In Other Words: the Black Market of Translations Negotiating Contemporary Cultures -NGBK – Berlim – Alemanha
– Zona Letal, Espaço Vital – Museu da Imagem em Movimento [MIMO] – Leiria – Portugal
– Exposição 05+50 MARP 20 ANOS – Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto – Ribeirão Preto – Brasil
2011
– Río-Montevideo – Centro de Fotografía – Montevideo – Uruguai
– Fotografica Bogotá 2011 – Fotomuseo – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Untitled (12ª Bienal de Istambul) – Istambul – Turquia
– Caos e Efeito – Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
– 4th Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art – Moscou – Rússia
– Arte Contemporânea Brasileira – Museu de Arte Contemporânea [MAC USP] – São Paulo – Brasil.
– Vestígios de Brasilidade – Santander Cultural Recife – Recife – Brasil
– Zona Letal, espaço vital. Obras da coleção da Caixa Geral de Depósitos – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas – Elvas – Portugal
– Mulheres, Artistas e Brasileiras – Salão Oeste do Palácio do Planalto – Brasília – Brasil
– Project Room – ZonaMACO – Cidade do México – México
– O Sismógrafo – Palácio das Artes – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– 29ª Bienal de São Paulo: Há sempre um copo de mar para um homem navegar [itinerâncias] Palácio das Artes – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Magical Consciousness – Anolfini – Bristol – Inglaterra
– A Sense of Perspective – Tate Liverpool – Liverpool – Inglaterra
2010
– Elle@centrepompidou – Artistes femmes dans les collections du Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou – Paris – França
– Livre Tradução – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Mapas Invisíveis – Caixa Cultural Rio de Janeiro – Rio Janeiro – Brasil
– A Grande Alegria- Casa Contemporânea- São Paulo – Brasil
– La Revanche de l’archive photographique – Festival 50JPG 2010. Centre de la Photographie – Genebra – Suiça
– MATT MULLICAN e ROS NGELA RENNÓ: Ars Itineris – Museo de Navarra – Pamplona – Espanha
– Wandering Positions: Selections from the insite archive -Museum of Contemporary Art of the National University of Mexico (MUAC)
– 20 anos do programa de exposições – Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– La Mirada. Fotografien und Videos aus der Daros Latinamerica Collection -Museum der Moderne – Rupertinum- Salzburg-Alemanha
– 29ª Bienal de São Paulo: Há sempre um copo de mar para um homem navegar- Pavilhão da Bienal – São Paulo – Brasil
– Haunted: contemporary photography /video/performance – Guggenheim – Nova York – EUA
– Modelos para Armar.Pensar Latinoamérica desde La Colección MUSAC – MUSAC – Castilla y Léon – Espanha
– Gigante por la propria naturaleza – Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno [IVAM] – Valência – Espanha
– De Malangatana a Pedro Cabrita Reis- Colecção Caixa Geral de Depósitos – Centro Cultural e Congressos -Caldas da Rainha – Portugal
– Olhares Femininos: Aqui e Lá – Galeria Fotoativa – Belém – Brasil
– Changing The Focus – Latin American Photography 1990-2005 – Museum of Latin American Art [MOLAA] – Long Beach – EUA
– Coleção Particular: monocromos – Coleção Oswaldo Correa da Costa – São Paulo – Brasil
– Ars Itineris. Artium, Vitoria; Museo de Navarra, Pamplona; Museo de Huesca, Huesca – Espanha
– Logroño/La Rioja – Sala exposiciones Banco Herrero, Oviedo; Museu de l’Art de la Pell, Vic; Museo del Mar, Vigo – Espanha
– Coleção Particular: photoimpressões – Coleção Oswaldo Correa da Costa – São Paulo.
– The traveling show – Fundación/Colección Jumex – Cidade do México – México
2009
– She is a femme fatale – Museu Coleção Berardo – Lisboa – Portugal
– Sexta-Livre 15 Minutes exhibition – Ateliê da Imagem Espaço Cultural – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– 7ª Bienal do Mercosul: Grito e Escuta – Rio Grande do Sul – Brasil
– SALON LIGHT – livros e flores – feira de artes impressas – Cneai + Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Sertão Contemporâneo – Caixa Cultural – Salvador – Brasil
– Vacas profanas no solo sagrado do pavão pavãozinho – Galeria Meninos de Luz – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Desenhos [drawings] A – Z – Museu da Cidade – Lisboa – Portugal
– Olhar da Crítica – Arte Premiada da ABCA e o acervo artístico dos palácios – Salão dos Pratos – Palácio dos Bandeirantes – São Paulo – Brasil
2008
– Questioning History – The Past in the Present – Nederlands Fotomuseum – Rotterdam – Holanda
– Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence – Salina Art Center – Kansas – EUA
– The past in the present. Questioning History – Museum of Photography – Rotterdam – Holanda
– Prêmio Porto Seguro de Fotografia – São Paulo – Brasil
– [P1] Prospect .1 – 1ª Bienal de New Orleans – New Orleans – EUA
– Cinema Sim – Narrativas e Projeções – Instituto Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
– 4ª Paralela – Liceu de Artes e Ofícios – São Paulo – Brasil
– Todos somos um – MAB-FAAP – Escola Superior do Ministério Público da União – Brasília – Brasil
– Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence – University of Southern California – Fisher Gallery – Los Angeles – EUA
– Provas de Contato – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Verbo 2008 – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Móbile: fotografia no acervo do MAB – Museu de Arte de Brasília – Galeria Rubem Valentim – Brasília – Brasil
– Arte Contemporânea Brasileira [Doação Credit Suisse] – Estação Pinacoteca – São Paulo – Brasil
– Procedente – MAP: Novas Aquisições – Museu de Arte da Pampulha – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Turistas, Volver – Galeria Carminha Macedo – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Heteronímia-Brasil – Museo de América – Madri – Espanha
– Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence – The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art – Sarasota – EUA
– Quase líquido – Instituto Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
– É Tudo Verdade – 13º Festival Internacional de Documentários – São Paulo- Brasil
– Sertão Contemporâneo – Caixa Cultural – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Artes Mundi 3 – National Museum Cardiff – Cardiff – País de Gales
– Parangolé – Fragmentos desde los noventa en España, Portugal y Brasil – Museo Patio Herreriano – Valladolid – Espanha
– Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence – McColl Center for Visual Art – Charlotte – EUA
– Fotografia Brasileira Contemporânea – FestFotoPoA 2008 –Centro Cultural Erico Verissimo (CEEE) – Porto Alegre – Brasil
2007
– Jano: La doble cara de la fotografía- Fondos de la Colección Permanente -Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía – Madri – Espanha
– Tempo ao tempo [Taking Time] – MARCO – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Vigo – Vigo – Espanha
– EDIT! – Fotografia e Filme na colecção ELLIPSE – Centro de Artes Visuais[CAV] – Portugal
– Dez dias de arte conceitual no acervo do MAM – MAM-SP – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– The Hours: Visual Arts of Contemporary Latin America – Museum of Contemporary Art – Sydney – Australia
– Puntos de Vista – Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Lateinamerika – Daros-Latinamerica Collection – Museum Bochum – Bochum – Alemanha
– Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence – Museo de Arte Contemporâneo- Bogotá – Colômbia; The Contemporary Museum – Honolulu – Hawai; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art – Sarasota; University of Southern Califórnia – Fisher Gallery – Los Angeles – EUA
– Festival Vidéoformes – Clermont-Ferrand – França
– Luz ao Sul – Encontro entre dois mares – Bienal de São Paulo-Valência – Museo del Carmen – Valencia – Espanha
– Homing Devices: Latin American and Caribbean Sculpture – University of South Florida USF Contemporary Art – Florida – EUA
– Institute for Research in Art/ Graphicstudio and Contemporary Art Museum – Tampa – EUA
– Lieu d’Art Contemporain LAC de la Réunion – Ilha da Reunião – França
– Itaú Contemporâneo – Arte no Brasil 1981 – 2006 – Instituto Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
– Situ/ação: vídeo de viagem – Paço das Artes – São Paulo – Brasil
– 80/90 Modernos, Pós-Modernos, Etc – Instituto Tomie Ohtake – São Paulo – Brasil
– Existencias – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León [MUSAC] – Castilla y León – Espanha
– Mapas, Cosmogonias e Puntos de Referencia – Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea – Santiago de Compostela – Espanha
2006
– É hoje, na arte brasileira contemporânea – coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand MAM – Santander Cultural – Porto Alegre – Brasil
– Observatori 2006 – Mostra Acciona – Valencia – Espanha
– Mam (na) Oca – Oca – São Paulo – Brasil
– Sem Título, 2006 – Comodato Eduardo Brandão e Jan Fjeld – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Manobras Radicais – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil [CCBB SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Zeitgenössische Fotokunst aus Brasilien – Neuer Berliner Kunstverein – Berlim – Alemanha
– Erótica –Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil [CCBB] – Rio de Janeiro e Brasília – Brasil
– Contrabando – Galeria Luisa Strina – São Paulo – Brasil
2005
– The Hours – Visual Arts of Contemporany Latin América Irish – Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) – Dublin – Irlanda
– Romane (a novel) – Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art – Lisboa – Portugal
– Erótica – os sentidos da arte – CCBB – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil – São Paulo – Brasil
– Panorama da Arte Brasileira 2005 – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Rencontres Internacionales de la Photographie – Ateliers SNCF – Arles – França
– Jogo da Memória – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM RJ] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Diversité dans l’Art Contemporain Brésilien – Espaço Brasil – Carreau du Temple – Paris – França
– Museo de Arte Del Banco de la República – Bogotá – Colombia
– Rencontres Paralléles Brasil / Brésils – Wharf Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie – Hérouville Saint-Clair – França
– O Corpo na Arte Contemporânea Brasileira – Instituto Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
– O Retrato como Imagem do Mundo – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Ecos y contrastes – Arte Contemporáneo en la Colección Cisneros – Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporâneo – San José – Costa Rica
– Experiência de Cinema – Project room – Arco 2005 – Madrid – Espanha
2004
– Fragmentos e Souvenires Paulistanos – Galeria Luisa Strina – São Paulo – Brasil
– « Nous venons en paix…» Histoires des Amériques – Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal – Montreal – Canada
– Invenção de mundos – Coleção Marcantonio Vilaça – Museu Vale do Rio Doce – Vila Velha – Brasil
– Arte Contemporânea Brasileira nas Coleções do Rio – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM RJ] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Diálogos – Arte Latinoamericano desde la Colección Cisneros – Museo de Arte de Lima – Lima – Perú
– Fotografia e Escultura do Acervo do MAM: 1995-2004 – Sala Paulo Figueiredo – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Novas Aquisições 2003 – Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM RJ] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Arquivo Geral – Jardim Botânico – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
2003
– 50ª Biennale di Venezia – Padiglione Brasile – Venezia – Itália
– A subversão dos Meios – Made in Brasil: Três Décadas do Vídeo Brasileiro e Arte e Sociedade – Uma Relação Polêmica – Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
– Strange Days – Museum of Contemporary Art – Chicago – EUA
– Projeto Imagética – Fundação Cultural de Curitiba – Curitiba – Brasil
– The Snezze Project, 80 artists (one work), featured film – Gazon Rouge Gallery – Atenas – Grécia
2002
– ArteFoto – CCB – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– El Archivo Pons – la colección de Alfonso Pons – Koldo Michelena – San Sebastian – Espanha
– Thisplay – La Colección Jumex – Ecatepec de Morelos – México
– Caminhos do Contemporâneo – 1952/2002 – Paço Imperial -Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Paralelos – Arte Brasileira da Segunda Metade do Século XX em Contexto – Coleção Cisneros –Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo; Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM RJ] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Apropriações/Coleções – Santander Cultural – Porto Alegre – Brasil
– La Mirada – Looking at Photography in Latin America Today – Daros Latin America Collection – Zurique – Suiça
2001
– Virgin Territory – The National Museum for Women in the Arts – Washington – EUA
– Trajetória da Luz na Arte Brasileira – Instituto Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
– Espelho Cego – Seleções de uma Coleção Contemporânea – Paço Imperial – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Bienal 50 Anos: Uma Homenagem a Ciccilo Matarazzo – Fundação Bienal de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Políticas da Diferença – A Arte de 26 Países Ibero-americanos no Fim do Século – Centro de Convenções de Pernambuco – Olinda – Brasil; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– 2nd Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art – Kunst-werke Berlin – Postfuhramt – Berlim – Alemanha
– El Final del Eclipse – El Arte de América Latina en la Transición al Siglo XXI – Fundación Telefônica – Madrid; Palacio de Los Condes de Gabia – Salas Caja General – Granada; Instituto de América – Santa Fé de Granada – Museo de Arte Extremeño e Iberoamericano – MEIAC – Badajoz (2002), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey – Monterrey; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes – Buenos Aires (2003); Salas de la Fundación Telefônica – Santiago de Chile, Museo de Arte y Salas de la Fundación Telefônica – Lima (2004)
– Experiment / Experiência – Art in Brazil 1958-2000 – Museum of Modern Art – Oxford – UK
2000
– Século 20: Arte do Brasil. Fundação Caloustre Gulbenkian – Lisboa – Portugal
– Brasil. Plural y Singular – Museo de Arte Moderno – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– 3ª Bienal Internacional de Fotografia: Linguagens da Imagem – Casa Vermelha – Curitiba – Brasil
– Um Oceano Inteiro para Nadar – Culturgest – Lisboa – Portugal
– Brasil + 500 anos – Mostra do Redescobrimento – Fundação Bienal de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Território Expandido II – SESC Pompéia – São Paulo – Brasil
– Coleção Pirelli – MASP de Fotografias. Museu de Arte de São Paulo [MASP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Obra Nova – Museu de Arte Contemporânea [MAC USP] – São Paulo – Brasil
1999
– 80 Anos de Arte no Brasil –Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– A Vueltas con los Sentidos – Pabellón de Caballerizas – Casa de América – Madri – Espanha
– Der Anagrammatische Körper; Der Körper und seine mediale Konstruktion – Kunsthaus Muerz – Mürzzuschlag – Graz; Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie [ZKM] – Karlsruhe (2000) – Alemanha
1998
– 24ª Bienal de São Paulo: Um e/entre Outro/s – Fundação Bienal de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Imagens Seqüestradas – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Transatlântico – Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno – Las Palmas
– The Garden of the Forking Paths. Kunstforeningen, Copenhague [Copenhagen]; Edsvik Konst & Kultur, Sollentuna, Estocolmo [Stockholm] (1999); Helsinki City Art Museum-Meilahti, Helsinque [Helsinki] (1999); Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum, Aalborg (1999)
– Archiv X – Offenes Kulturhaus – Linz – Áustria
– Horizonte Reflexivo – Centro Cultural Light – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
1997
– Hacer Memoria – Museo Alejandro Otero – Caracas – Venezuela
– Die Anderen Modernen – Haus der Kulturen der Welt – Berlim – Alemanha
– Sexta Bienal de la Habana – Havana – Cuba
– Insite’97 – San Diego & Tijuana – EUA e México
– 2nd Kwangju Biennale: Hybrid – Kwangju – Coréia do Sul
– 1ª Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul – Porto Alegre – Brasil
– 2nd Johannesburg Biennale – Johanesburgo
– Brasil Panorama de Arte Brasileira, Edição97 – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
1996
– Novas Travessias: Recent Photographic Art from Brazil – The Photographers’ Gallery – Londres – Inglaterra
– Prospekt 96 – Frankfurter Kunstverein – Frankfurt – Alemanha
– Container 96: Art Across Oceans – Langelinie – Copenhague – Dinamarca
– Sin Fronteras/Arte Latinoamericano Actual – Museo Alejandro Otero – Caracas – Venezuela
– Transparências –Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM RJ] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Public Works – Van Abbe Museum – Eindhoven – Holanda
1995
– Obsessions, from Wunderkammer to Cyberspace – Foto Biennale Enschede – Rijksmuseum Twenthe – Enschede – Holanda
1994
– Espacios Fragmentados. Arte, Poder y Marginalidad – Quinta Bienal de La Habana – Havana – Cuba
– Revendo Brasília – Brasília neu Gesehen – Galeria Athos Bulcão – Teatro Nacional – Brasília; MIS – Museu da Imagem e do Som – São Paulo; Palácio Gustavo Capanema – Funarte – Rio de Janeiro (1995); Museu Metropolitano de Arte – Curitiba (1995); Usina do Gasômetro – Porto Alegre (1995); Centro Cultural da UFMG – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Die Dichte des Lichts: Zeitgenössische brasilianische Fotografie – Fotografie Forum – Frankfurt – Alemanha
– 22ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Espelhos e Sombras – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Fotografia Contaminada – Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Cocido y Crudo – Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia – Madri – Espanha
1993
– UltraModern: The Art of the Contemporary Brazil – National Museum of Women in the Arts – Washington – EUA
– Aperto’93: Emergenza – XLV Biennale di Venezia – Veneza – Itália
– Space of Time: Contemporary Art from the America -. Americas Society – Nova York – EUA
– A Presença do Readymade: 80 anos –Museu de Arte Contemporânea [MAC USP] – São Paulo – Brasil
1992
– Turning the Map: images from the Americas – Camerawork Gallery – Londres – Inglaterra
– Eco-sensorial – Extrativismo Urbano – Galeria de Arte da EAV-Parque Lage – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
1991
– Montagens Ambientais – Centro Cultural da UFMG – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Apropriações 91 – Paço das Artes – São Paulo – Brasil
1990
– 4 Olhos – Galeria Casa Triângulo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Iconógrafos, 14 Fotógrafos Hoje – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
1989
– Operações Fundamentais – A Soma das Diferenças – Grande Galeria do Palácio das Artes – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– As Afinidades Eletivas – Centro de Arte Corpo – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
1988
– Luz, Cor & Experimentação – Galeria do InFoto – FUNARTE – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
1987
– Dez Fotógrafas. Grande Galeria do Palácio das Artes – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
1986
– Bonecas & Bonecos – Sala Arlinda Correa Lima – Palácio das Artes – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
1985
– Desenhos & Outras Intoxicações – Galeria do IAB – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Fotografias. Itaú Galeria – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
Awards and grants
2023
Women In Motion Award. Kering – Arles – França
2014
CIFO Grants & Commissions Program Recipients – EUA
2013
The Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards 2013 – First PhotoBook and PhotoBook of the Year – Paris – França
Historical Book Award 2013 – Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles – França
2012
Alice Award – Best Political Art – Bruxelas – Bélgica
2009
Prêmio Mário Pedrosa, Associação Brasileira de Críticos de Arte – ABCA 2008, Edital Arte e Patrimônio, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
2008
Prêmio Porto Seguro de Fotografia, categoria especial, Brasil
1o. lugar na categoria Foto-arte. O Melhor da Fotografia Brasil 07/08. FS Revista da Imagem, São Paulo, Brasil
2004
Prêmio JABUTI, categoria Projeto e Produção Gráfica para o livro O Arquivo Universal e outros Arquivos. [Jabuti Award, category Graphic projet and production for the book The Universal Arquive and other arquives] , Brasil
2001
13. Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica VideoBrasil, Sao Paulo. Video VeraCruz, 2000, versão em português. [13rd International Festival of Electronic Art VideoBrasil, for VeraCruz, 2000, Portuguese version] , Brasil
2000
Prêmio Cultural Sérgio Motta 2000 – experimentação em novas mídias e meios tecnológicos em arte São Paulo. Série Vulgo, 1998-1999, fotografia digital. [Sergio Motta Award 2000 – experimentation in new media and technology in art for Vulgo Series, 1998-1999, digital photography] , Brasil
1999
Bolsa Guggenheim, Nova York [New York]. Video-instalação Espelho Diário e [and] projeto de livro de artista O Arquivo Universal e outros Arquivos [The Universal Arquive and other arquives]. SANITAS-ARCO Electrónico/Media Art’99, Madri [Madrid]. Video-objeto Vulgo/texto, 1998.
1998
Bolsa Vitae de Arte [grant], categoria Artes Plásticas [Fine Arts section], São Paulo. Video-instalação Espelho Diário, Brasil
Prêmio aquisitivo no Prêmio Brasília de Artes Visuais, Museu de Arte de Brasília, Brasília, DF, Brasil
Indicação para o II Prêmio Johnny Walker de Artes Plásticas [Nomination for 2nd Johnny Walker Fine Arts Award], Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
1997
Prêmio Santista Juventude, categoria Fotografia [Photography section], Fundação Santista [Foundation], São Paulo.
1995
Bolsa de trabalho no exterior, Programa Artista em Residência, Civitella Ranieri Fundação, Umbertide, Itália
1993
Prêmio aquisitivo no II Salão Paraense de Arte Contemporânea, Curitiba, PR, Brasil
Prêmio aquisitivo no 13o. Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas, IBAC/FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
1992
Prêmio Marc Ferrez de Fotografia (IBAC/FUNARTE), Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
1991
Prêmio aquisitivo “Cidade de Ribeirão Preto” no XVI SARP (Salão de Artes de Ribeirão Preto), Ribeirão Preto, Brasil
1989
Prêmio Fotoptica no VII Salão Paulista de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo, Brasil
1988
2o. Prêmio no XIII SARP (Salão de Artes Plásticas de Ribeirão Preto), Ribeirão Preto, Brasil
Prêmio aquisitivo Hoescht do Brasil no XX Salão Nacional de Arte, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil
1986
Prêmio aquisitivo Empresa Cautos no XXXIX Salão de Artes Plásticas de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brasil
Residencies
2006
– Lieu d’Art Contemporain LAC de la Réunion – Ilha da Reunião – França
Public Collections (selection)
– Museu da Fotografia– Fortaleza – Brasil
– Fundación Museo Reina Sofía – Madri – Espanha
-Museu de Arte de Brasília – Brasiília – Brasil
-Fundação Caloustre Gulbenkian – Lisboa – Portugal
-Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM SP) – São Paulo – Brasil
-Pinacoteca do Estado São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
-Museu de Arte da Pampulha – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
-Centro Galego de Arte Contemporáneo CGAC – Santiago de Compostela – Espanha
-Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León [MUSAC]- Castilla y León – Espanha
-Museo de Cáceres – Espanha
-Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo [MEIAC] – Badajoz- Espanha
-Art Institute of Chicago- Chicago – EUA
-Latino Museum – Los Angeles – EUA
-Museum of Contemporary Art [MOCA] – Los Angeles – EUA
-Orange County Museum of Art – Newport Beach – EUA
-Guggenheim Museum -Nova York – EUA
-Centro Georges Pompidou – Paris – França
-Tate Modern – Londres – Inglaterra
-Culturgest – Lisboa- Portugal
-Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst SMAK – Gent- Bélgica
– Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – Recife – Brasil
– Museu de Arte Moderna Aloisio Magalhães (MAMAM) – Recife – Brasil
– Coleção Pirelli – Museu de Arte de São Paulo [MASP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Biblioteque Nationale de France, Paris, França
Public Collections open to the Public
– Hirsch Library at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston – Houston – EUA
– Museum of Moderna Art [MOMA] – Nova Iorque – EUA
– Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporânea – Inhotim – Brasil
– Fondazioni Cassa de Risparmo de Modena – Itália
– Daros LatinAmerica- Zurique – Suiça
– Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand / Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Coleção Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. Comodato Roger Wright – São Paulo –Brasil
– Colección Jumex – Cidade do México – México
– Serviços Social do Comércio (Sesc) – Sesc Paulista – São Paulo – Brasil
– Museu da Fotografia Fortaleza – Fortaleza – Brasil
– El Espacio 23. Miami – EUA
Quais são as narrativas que ganham o selo legitimador da história? Quais são as figuras e eventos alçados a posições de destaque e quem decide mantê-los nestes panteões? Estas são perguntas para as quais nem sempre é simples encontrar respostas. De todo modo, a inscrição de algo ou alguém na historiografia requer documentação, e costuma vir acompanhada pelo uso de imagens como meio de atestar sua validade, tanto na história geral quanto na da arte. Em tempos anteriores, tais imagens vinham sob a forma de esculturas ou pinturas. Desde o advento da fotografia, a ela foi transferida a responsabilidade de provar a autenticidade dos acontecimentos.
Documento-monumento / monumento-documento, de Rosângela Rennó, questiona precisamente o papel da fotografia como evidência indubitável de um fato. Há muito tempo a artista mantém a prática de colecionar registros imagéticos de uma variedade de fontes, desde arquivos públicos, passando por veículos de comunicação e incluindo álbuns de família. Investigando as repercussões e direcionamentos de tais registros, coloca em xeque a suposta objetividade de memórias, sejam individuais ou coletivas. Na mostra da Galeria Vermelho, resultados destes vasculhamentos propõem olhares críticos sobre os discursos que se espalham a partir da inserção de determinadas imagens em determinadas narrativas.
A reprodução de informações visuais em massa tem a capacidade de resgatar significados arraigados no imaginário coletivo. A fachada vermelha do prédio exibe sobre a porta de entrada a silhueta chapada em negro de um homem em pose enfática, a qual vem sendo amplamente disseminada há mais de cem anos, por vários países, tanto em seu louvor quanto como crítica – o visitante ilustrado reconhece, com relativa facilidade, tratar-se de Lenin. Na parte de dentro, no térreo, está instalada a obra Good apples / bad apples (2019), composta por mais de 800 fotos emolduradas de monumentos erguidos em homenagem ao líder russo. Fruto de uma pesquisa de dois anos da artista sobre o tema, são descritas por ela como “observações a partir do ato de colecionar fotos de estátuas de Lenin”, um estudo do que aconteceu com os monumentos ao longo do tempo, durante e após o fim da União Soviética. Cada imagem traz anotações manuscritas de Rennó e o desenho de uma maçã semelhante ao logotipo da gigante dos computadores estadunidense, símbolo do capitalismo.
Um procedimento análogo ao da intervenção na fachada é o que vemos em Aucune Bête au Monde (2019). Este é o título (que quer dizer Nenhuma Fera no Mundo) de um livro de 1959 sobre a guerra de independência da Argélia, entre os anos de 1954 e 1962. A publicação contém fotografias e relatos do confronto, de autoria de uma dupla de oficiais do exército francês. As figuras de militares foram cobertas com tinta cinza e todas as palavras foram recortadas. Sem a individuação que os rostos à mostra trariam, permanece a noção de que se trata de uma ação armada, mas já não se pode saber se é uma guerra, uma missão humanitária, um resgate ou um exercício de treinamento de combatentes, e nem em que parte do mundo se deram estes eventos. Algumas constatações, ainda assim, são inevitáveis – armas são reconhecíveis mesmo que apenas em silhueta, pois fazem parte do cotidiano de qualquer pessoa vivendo em sociedades complexas, e a visão delas sempre traz a reboque a proximidade de algum perigo. Saem de cena a identificação de agressores e agredidos e a justificativa ou não da potencial hostilidade. O entendimento de confronto, entretanto, é universal.
A superexposição midiática de certas imagens é trabalhada na obra-provocação Exercícios de 3D (transparência) # 4 (2019). Pequenos textos descrevendo fotografias famosas estão pregados na parede e, sobre uma prateleira, fica à disposição um aparato antigo para visualizar imagens em 3D que, no entanto, mostra um trecho descritivo desconfortável de ler pela movimentação das letras. O material faz parte do Arquivo Universal, que a artista começou em 1992. São descrições jornalísticas de fotografias disseminadas pela imprensa internacional de maneira tão intensa que a leitura permite à memória (na maioria dos exemplos) associar a descrição à imagem correspondente, incorporada ao repertório visual da maioria das pessoas com acesso a jornais e revistas de grande circulação.
Em meio às questões mais universais, Rennó apresenta um trabalho que diz respeito à conjuntura local do país. As brasileiríssimas Havaianas se tornaram símbolos mundialmente conhecidos que evocam um paraíso descontraído, sensual e de natureza exuberante. Em 2019, houve a ascensão de um governo de extrema-direita determinado a reprimir toda cultura libertária e com preocupações ambientais praticamente nulas. Brasil (2019) se compõe de dois pés direitos das sandálias nas cores principais da bandeira, verde e amarelo, com o ano de 2019 inscrito em baixo relevo. As pontas, chamuscadas, são ao mesmo tempo um prenúncio da “caça às bruxas” anunciada e um lembrete das chamas que assolaram a Amazônia ao longo do ano.
Rosângela Rennó is a consummate, whole, complete artist. She is art itself, plus the refined discourse surrounding it. Thinker and artifice in a single person, she manages theory and practice in a single motion, while thus leaving an immense space for subtlety and transition in the intervals of her discourse. The artist’s art installs itself and occupies space in the meanders between the real world and the spiritual world, in photography that is detached from reality in order to touch upon memory worn by time, in the smoke that transits between the material and the spiritual worlds, advancing into the void and impregnating the spirit– as is the case with the work per fumum, which expands through or by the smoke, emitting its perfume, according to the etymology of the word.
In Room I, we see the photos Magic Lantern (2012), created in a photo lab on gelatin and silver salt-based paper . They are accompanied by eight magic lanterns — old-fashioned projectors from the 19th century and the early 20th century. In the laboratory, during the processing, the photos were exposed to a more intense, focused beam of light, which affected the correct reproduction of the negative, as if a stain had consumed the landscape represented, like an inescapable black hole. Originally, each black and white negative used in the laboratory generated four distinct images, depending on the intensity and size of the black hole produced on the surface of the photographic paper during its exposure to the light.
The magic lanterns, in turn, reveal, through the projection, details of those same landscapes consumed by the light in the photo lab. The project appears as an exercise in which two kinds of light emissions interfere and produce images with characteristics opposite those that originate from the same sources. Contrary to digitally-based documentation, this visual exercise opens up a path for a discussion of the ontology of the original photographic image and its philosophical relationship to a possible chapter in the history of humanity, eclipsed, in the present day, by an excess of rationalism which, incidentally, forgets its ancient relationship with mystery and phantasmagoria. Rosângela Rennó’s depth seems to realize that which Alexandre Herculano described in his novel The vicar of aldeia: “With Kant, the universe is a doubt: with Locke, the doubt is our spirit: and into one of these abysses all the anthologies are thrown.”
This photography by Rosângela Rennó demonstrates art as history, technique and memory, but it also aspires to the phantasmagorical, the magical and the religious and combines with the magic lantern once used in ancestral occult sessions, as if the artist were trying to promote the return of art to its mythical aspect, which perhaps helps to explain its origin, emphasizing the fact that, historically, the religious and the artistic struggled for similar spaces.
In Traveling waters, vials of perfume are placed inside existing display cases, in the passageway between two floors, sharing space with the locale’s devices of telecommunication. The glass of the cases appears covered by a semi-milky film and a number of circular cuts in them allow us to view only the vials, some of which are empty, others containing a little perfume. The original objects remain out of sight. In bright lettering that accompanies this small vertical museum, Rosângela registers the names of the perfumes on display, forming a visual poem filled with assonance and references. The display cases protect the fragile vials which, in turn, preserve what remains of the scent of the old, known fragrances. Still, it is the per fumum from different resins of incense that dissipate in the space, serving as a bridge between the terrestrial world of humanity below and the ethereal world of the gods above in the rites of so many religions. Moreover, the perfume that evokes memory alludes to a time often in the past which is brought to the present through an epiphany. It is also intensely Proustian and combines with Rosângela Rennó’s concrete discourse of art, capable, incidentally, of sharper clarity than her evasive photography, in the apparent anachronism which also distinguishes her works.
In Room II, the so-called Transcendental tourist, an alter ego created by Rosângela Rennó, documents her travels in a quite peculiar manner through images and texts. She is a very special kind of tourist who travels, absorbs the cultures of others and shuffles images, traditions, worship ceremonies and memories. Ten projectors and monitors display videos filmed in such places as Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean, La Gomera, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the Bosphorus in Turkey and the mystical cities of India. All, but each in their own way, seem to show the transitions and transactions between the material and the immaterial, with video documentation of little-known and peculiar landscapes subsequently manipulated during the editing process. Travels that are at once physical and metaphysical.
Also part of the Transcendental tourist series, the work Waiting for… depicts two parked cars, Gogô and Didi, in eternal conversation on an unidentified street in Lagos, the largest city in Africa, watching a long parade of a world of identical and similar cars and humans that never ends.
In Room III, the artist presents two spaces, Magic circle and Fantastic realism. The latter features spectrums of light projected on the wall, occupying the room in eternal movement. The video entitled Magic circle shows objects that speak of their own existence to a probable spectator, consolidating the occupation project promoted by the artist at the Eva Klabin Foundation. These collected objects, at times quite old and ancestral in shape, seem to move their solid mouths in sparks of light, which border on the humorous, sarcastic even, not allowing them to freely penetrate the religious and the mystical. Color envelops all of this energy like a blanket and, as Carlos Fuentes said in Aura that green is related to the chakra of the heart, this helps to explain its ethereal and, at the same time, concrete presence in Rosângela Rennó’s work. It is impossible not to recall Russian filmmaker and art theorist Andrei Tarkovsky, who said in Sculpting Time:
Art affirms all that is best in man – hope, faith, love, beauty, prayer… All that he dreams of and what he hopes for… When someone who doesn’t know how to swim is thrown into the water, instinct tells his body what movements will save him. The artist, too, is driven by a kind of instinct, and his work furthers man’s search for what is eternal, transcendent, divine – often in spite of the sinfulness of the poet himself. (p. 286)
And furthermore Tarkovsky seems to be directly referring to Rosângela Rennó’s art when he says: It will all become interconnected and necessary. One thing will be echoed by another in a kind of general interchange: and an atmosphere will come into being as a result of this concentration on what is most important. (p. 235) Rosângela Rennó’s exhibition promotes a whirlwind of connections and coherences, a vortex of recurrences that penetrate all spheres of art and the real world, including the abstract. The senses are invoked: primordial and central vision, hearing, via the varied sounds of the world and the sense of smell seemingly distant from the usual work of art. Everything alludes to everything: atmosphere, lighting, image, sound and scent in a general exchange. Even the furniture in the reading room and the display case are used as sculptural media. This circular movement, from intense transition between the magical and the logical, between the mysterious and the precise, between the esoteric and the realistic begins right away with the titles of her works that are full of movement. Even they allude to everything, because in Rosângela Rennó’s work, there are no fractures, except for those that serve to better sew together the narrative capacity. Everything has the spirit of everything.
Rosângela Rennó’s art deals with the impossibility of collective memory, and the way that it tends to get siphoned off by the receptacles that we have developed to contain it. As direct as such a description sounds, however, and as defined an area of practice as the combination of photography and text remains for many contemporary artists, there are several aspects of Rennó’s practice that make her work quite distinct from those of other artists working within parallel stylistic structures in other parts of the world. Still, the impact of her work extends far beyond arguments about its comparative originality, or even her considerable skills in getting it made.
On the other hand, Rennó has been deeply engaged by the visual qualities of old (or not so old), semi-anonymous photographs, especially those produced for institutional, journalistic or legal purpose, and where little if any attempt was made to produce an image of the sitter which could be thought of as artistic. In fact, it is sometimes the case that the image(s) which Rennó selects as the basis of a particular piece can barely be deciphered as the likeness of a particular person. As examples of representation, they remain marginalized, in both the literal and sociocultural senses of the world. Their focus if often fuzzy, and their challenge to the visual authority of our world – in other words, to the omnipotent role played by high-contrast photographic, computer-generated and video-based imagery in our contemporary visual environment – is almost pitiable in its modesty. Because they remind us of own limits and imperfections (not to mention mortality), Rennó’s images provoke a complex reaction on our part, made up of equal parts nostalgia for and rejection of the past.
The other important area of Rennó’s concern has been in the selection and development of texts. Making her way through vast jungles of rumors, embittered slurs and sheer folklore that constitute the written press of today – especially in a country with such diverse and voracious reading patterns as Brazil -, Rennó has isolated certain fragments and given them back to us in the form of anonymous quotations. While we cannot avail ourselves of the sources for these fragments, and must therefore abandon our understandable instinct to see them as part of a narrative continuity, the original flavor and intent of each piece of text is all too clear. In fact, as we absorb the submerged meanings that Rennó’s cut-and-paste techniques tend to bring to light, we are equally aware of the double fact that the intended reader of this texts is not us, and, more importantly, that the meanings we have gleaned from Rennó’s re-configuration were only meant to have been absorbed on the most unconscious, subliminal level by consumer groups to which these magazines and newspaper are addressed.
In [ the installation Hipocampo ], Rennó has temporarily set aside photographic imagery altogether, and chosen to focus on words by themselves – or rather, on text which takes the form of imagery. Presenting these texts through the medium of a complex lighting system that significantly modifies the visitor’s perceptual relationship to the room in which they are displayed, Rennó transforms the act of reading in public into a kind of play of visibility and invisibility, and of darkness and light. In particular, the act of coming-into-visibility conveyed by the gradual metamorphosis of a seemingly blank wall into a block of text assures us that the relationship to photography (in the form of darkroom techniques) is still very much present.
In a profound way, Rennó is interested in culture’s leftovers – what has been tossed aside in the process of deciding what is valuable. The ironic name Universal Archive, which she has given to her vast collection of found materials, reflects the notion that society can often best be represented through precisely the kind of objects which it does not want to have bear the responsibility of its likeness. Her manner of re-presenting this material strips away some of the mystique of representation, and gives us instead a collective self-portrait, based on the unquestioned half-truths that constitute a large part of the cultural diet of any reasonably literate person. But in this precise focus of detail, Rennó’s activity can also be understood as an attempt to re-humanize the process of receptivity, for readers as well as spectators. Her unstated assumption seems to be that even the apparent carelessness by which words are flung about in an information – based society is merely the opposite side of the coin from the kind of measured, critical reading that she invites us to undertake. Through recognizing and capturing the human aspects of an increasingly dehumanized area of cultural production, Rennó also reminds us that the search for universal values is what making art is all about.
Dan Cameron / 1995
(published in the catalogue for the exhibit at Galeria Camargo Vilaça, São Paulo, 1995)
Rosângela’s Rennó’s installation for the Twenty-Second International São Paulo Biennial uses photographs from family albums and texts gathered from newspapers to articulate the singularity of personal histories with facts which appear in the mass communication media. Blown up and darkened, the photographs are juxtaposed with texts which refer to photographs in news fragments, texts where humam frailty and wretchedness are revealed for the creation of a space to experienced in black and white silence.
They evoke an intensely private life, secret and intimate, and in the effort of allowing themselves to be contemplated they resort to our natural curiosity about the lives of the others. They propose meditations on the image, the creative process and the experience of living in a world where everything has already been invented and is saturated with images and information. Trough an experience of the place where they lodge themselves, they seek to estabilish some possibility of singularity, of the individuation of existence.
It is not a question of writing biographies or an autobiography. On the contrary. The installation proposes to keep away any definition or affirmation of reality so as to create an interaction with the spectator, who is capable of inventing a reality from the interstices of image and texts. But there is something beyond the indetermination of references: texts and images appear as though they were reprocessing memories in addition to fragments of a history, of any history, including that of photography itself. Since the beginning of her career Rennó has dedicated herself to a systematic investigation of the effects of time, forgetting, and social and psychological changes as transformers of memory recorded by photography, in its own right a process of transforming experience into memory.
What is the meaning of these decontextualized texts and images? I propose here to look at the past, to what has already happened, and is used as a deliberate strategy of disguise, infinitely more complex than mere nostalgia or any appeal of an ideological nature. Questioning the codes of identification, photographs are not merely self-evident reproductions of the real – Rennó is interested precisely in the imperfection of memory and photography, as they both fragmentary and approximate lived experiences -, but they are constructs, the product of a way of seeing which ensnares the spectator in a politics of the gaze, proof of the observer as master of the observed.
The thexts appearing alongside the images would be at once parameter and commentary, which might lead the spectator to seek within himself for the keys to an understanding of the environment created by the artist. And yet they estabilish a primordial distance between the text and the image. They concede no explanation which might be manipulated to constitute a meaning or shed light on what we are attempting to see. On the contrary, in phisically distancing themselves from the image they emphasize the space of indefinition. The narrative support trancende the literalness of words and gesture which selects them, channeling notions of state, statute, and indentity which express the precariouness of the implicit.
Rennó is not concerned with the opposition between text and image in the manner of other contemporary artists. The juxtaposition of texts and images, where each is charged with indefinition is not enough to bestow meaning, for the pairs are not agents of the construction of a possible interpretation. This task is left to the spectator who must construct a meaning for them.
Photographs and texts juxtaposed within an environment, are not “empty” only because we cannot know exactly to what it is that they refer.
There is much more beyond the indeterminacy of references. On being presented out of their contexts, they (photographs and texts) reaffirm their condition as things past and reveal with lightness their initial condition for the establishment of another situation, another inscription, other sgnifiers. If what they present is not clearly identified, there is a precise meaning for the place to where they are going: outside the picture, to a space beyond the surface upon which they are supported, to their own perception. Because they are part of the record of a history about the process of the emptying of the image, for it no longer appears unaccompanied and we are left with the responsibility of establishing the connections between image and text.
Rennós installation intende to enable a sort of future memory of the present in a game with time, where past and present unite, are superimposed and are confused. The artist does not shed us in search of a meaning for these photographs ad images as much as she invites us to create an image and found a memory.
No fim da madrugada [At the end of daybreak]
House in the Sky
Document-Monument | Monument-Document
Monday, June 4, 2019
Overload
Nuptials
Vera Cruz
Coletiva
COLETIVA
Fotos contam Fatos
Rosângela Rennó
Suspicious Mind
Menos-valia (Leilão)
Coletiva
Group Show
Expansivo
Coletiva
Livre Tradução
Forma, Conteúdo e Poesia
Corpo da Alma [Body of Soul]
Tons de cinza [Shades of gray]
Provas de Contato [Contact Proofs]
A última foto [The last photo]