Rosângela Rennó was an invited artist at the Stiftung Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv zu Köln (RWWA) as part of the second edition of the Artist Meets Archive programme.
In her long-standing artistic work, Rennó explores the relationship between remembering and forgetting. She critically examines Brazil's past and investigatively works out hidden information from the pictures of popular photography collections. By appropriating found images, she works against forgetting. Thus she transforms small flea market prints into large museum prints. She transfers a stock of images into complex installations, sometimes as projections or in connection with film. In this way she not only creates an encounter with anachronistic image carriers and historical artefacts, but also exposes new readings and alternative narratives.
Since the 1980s I have been attracted to vanacular images and a little later to archive images, because I always thought that through this kind of images I could make a connection to people and humanity. Especially in Brazil, I think that our history is written by the lack of information and images, and not in moments that have been well documented and told by the people.
Rosângela Rennó out of the video: Rosângela Rennó – on Rio Montevideo, The Photographers Gallery, 2016
More information about Rosângela Rennó
All artists who participated in the program
Participants
The Artist Meets Archive programme invites international artists to collaborate with the Cologne Archives & Collections. Within the framework of a residency, they can immerse themselves in the city's photographic holdings and develop an exhibition project for the Photoszene Festival. In the first two editions of Artist Meets Archive, eleven artists were able to participate and present their projects in Cologne.