Alice Quaresma

My work confronts the limits of photography as I confront my life as an outsider. The photographs register my journey over the years. Reveals the encounters and losses over time. As an immigrant I rely on my memory to feel a sense of worth and identity. Today, my stories are my identity. In a world of so much information I bring to my work the condition of imagination. I create images that are escapes over places I have visited and revisited. I study subjectivity in a photograph. Over time, my memory of my root fades away and gain emotional meaning. 

Our imaginations give us strength to what is to come. In my studio practice I have explored with concepts around “mental object” from Susan Sontag book called “On Photography” and the idea of “punctum” in “Camera Lucida” by Ronald Barthes. I have been experimenting with utopian sceneries that are formed by images from my past that I overlap with lines, shapes and colors. Geometry is a simple and universal way I found to play with objectivity in photography. The work surprises the viewer and invite the viewer to use their imagination, to rescue their memories. To feel as an outsider. I want to bring a sense of discovery and discomfort in my work. I am always learning something new, life around me continues to get more complex and hectic. Within my work, the horizon is a constant in my one of a kind painted photographs. It is a place of departing. It is a place of discovery. It is the place of the unknown. This is the place I wake up every day.