” My interest in creating photographs that explore memory and imagination was triggered by my personal take on the Susan Sontag book “On Photography” where she refers to photography as a medium that best manipulate the mind, calling photography a “mental object”. I started to create images that would take people out of a real space and into an imaginary one, build through an intimate process of rescuing and reinvestigating my journey. My work is about images of familiar places that gain a new perspective with hand painted color elements, moving away from the need of describing a “functional place”. What comes out of it, is the unique discoveries in the process of making something repeatedly.
The Neo-Concrete art movement has been a great reference to my practice and the relation between life and artmaking. The artworks of Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica were influential on my experimentation with playful geometrical shapes and how I deconstruct the formal elements in the photograph, opening space to a ludic spectrum. My work starts with scenes from the past. “
“My research is a dialogue between the many intriguing cultural clashes and discoveries in the life of an immigrant. Using my personal photo archive, I go on a nostalgic journey to create fragmented landscape images that reflect on identity, memory, and imagination. I deconstruct the image to question new ways to look at a photograph. Each image focus on an emotional reading and the subjective qualities in photography that tend to hide behind the image power of describing a scene. On each work I bring paint and other materials to shift the viewers’ attention into an emotional and sensorial experience. ”
Alice Quaresma
Alice Quaresma, Better Days, 2020, acrylic paint and photo print over photographic print, 83 x 127 cm.Alice Quaresma, The Disclosure of the Subject’s Essence, 2021, photograph printed on cotton paper with gouache, acrylic paint and color pencil, 100 x 127 cm.Alice Quaresma, Within a Private Space, 2021, photograph printed on cotton paper with acrylic paint and pencil, 50 x 45 cm.Alice Quaresma, Public Space in Which the Self has Meaning, 2021, photograph printed on cotton paper with acrylic paint and pencil, 50 x 45 cm.Alice Quaresma, Public Showing of City Life, 2021, photograph printed on cotton paper with acrylic paint and pencil, 50 x 45 cm.Alice Quaresma, Otherwise Ignorant of The Life Imaged, 2021, photograph printed on cotton paper with acrylic paint and pencil, 50 x 45 cm.Alice Quaresma, Limited and Personal Urban Geography, 2021, photograph printed on cotton paper with acrylic paint and pencil, 50 x 45 cm.Alice Quaresma, Extraordinary Sense of Emptiness, 2021, photograph printed on cotton paper with acrylic paint and pencil, 50 x 45 cm.Alice Quaresma, Desire, 2019, color pencil and tape over photo print, 50 x 76 cm.Alice Quaresma, Defines the Photographic Ground, 2021, photograph printed on cotton paper with acrylic paint and pencil, 50 x 45 cm.Alice Quaresma, Deeply Intimate Relationship, 2021, photograph printed on cotton paper with acrylic paint and pencil, 50 x 45 cm.
