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Writer's picturePaula Damasceno

unidentified subjects, removing self if possible II

unidentified subjects, is the transcendence of the documentation of the activation of Shared Ancestry, a three dimensional piece through about genealogy and the contemporary trend of seeking individual DNA lineage, traits and legacy.


The sculptural piece is made of semi-erased portraits transferred onto Iroko wood squares that are serially attached by conductor wire to strings of raffia. Iroko is the symbolic Western African tree of connection between the sacred and the mundane worlds and a Orisha itself. Shared Ancestry is also an elegy to the Western African Orisha Omolu - whose main characteristic is healing and whose ritual vestment, in Brazil, is made entirely of raffia. The portraits transferred onto the Iroko wood indicate the elusive quality of portraiture, “modes of self,” and modes of “others.” They are hundreds of individual portraits from multiple regions of the world whose fixed identities had been transferred, erased, and that are completely blurred and unified by the ritual/performance of repetitive swirling.


unidentified subjects transcends itself as a documentation by generating imagery in which light and darkness rather than fighting each other find a path to be a generative pair of concepts that take many diverse shapes. Subjectivities then are both present and unattainable, unidentified, unclassifiable.


unidentified subjects is in progress and bellow you can enjoy three 42 x 62 inches untitled digital overlays printed on bond paper at my first yes of Low Residency MFA program at the School of The Art and Design Institute of Chicago.









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