ISABEL PORTO
CAAF Residency st[art]@art central, April – June 2012
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Throughout my life, I have been fascinated with and inspired by cities: their architecture, their people, and their culture. So far, I have lived in five different cities: Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba, both in my home country – Brazil, Lyon – France, Miami – USA, and Calgary – Canada, since early 2011. My experiences in each of these places have contributed to the development of my artwork in many different ways. Living in a new city is refreshing and challenging. The exploration of the new is the main source of my artistic inspiration and the basis for my art process and work. The city plays a key role in my work and is in fact the core of each of my projects.
In 2010 the project “Circulando” was initiated, inspired by the natural landscape of Rio de Janeiro. At that time my research focused on “Pedra da Gávea,” a huge and majestic mountain that cuts the city and coastline in half. Consequently, I started photographing the mountain in different locations and from different angles. My next step was to piece these images together, creating a sequence of pictures forming a malleable object in the shape of a coil. After that, this coil of photos was photographed in different environments creating new images.
In Calgary, I am still working with this project, exploring this coil object with the image of the “Pedra da Gávea“ mountain, using Calgary as it’s background. So far, it has been interesting the result of the theses experiences where we have a typical view of Rio de Janeiro layered with the city of Calgary in different locations and seasons. After one year here, a new coil object has been created with new local photographs. During this residency, I’ll continue the project photographing the coil objects in different environments/sites.