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Material em Bruto (Raw Material)
2025
4K video, 36:10 mins, stereo sound

Pigment prints on archival paper with white pigment ink drawing
60 x 60 cm each 


 
This project was developed through an artist residency in the region of Mêda as part of ViViFiCAR, an initiative of the Porto Photography Bienal 2025.

Exhibition at Museu Soares dos Reis, Porto as part of the Bienal'25 Fotografia do Porto   

https://bienal25.bienalfotografiaporto.pt/en

 
 
 

Material em Bruto (Raw Material) was filmed over a year in the Interior Douro region. Through testimonies from local communities, Material em Bruto reflects on different, at times conflicting, notions of value in relation to the landscape and how practices of cultivation, preservation and extraction benefit and impact the people who live there. Material em Bruto (Raw Material) pays particular attention to past, present and possible future, mining activity in the region, using the mine as a metaphor to explore ideas of what is contained but not immediately visible within the landscape. Lithium represents a new ‘promise’ of wealth, the white gold that threatens to divide communities and impact the local environment. 

The film follows an investigative process of translation, one that is informed by the knowledge (both inherited and specialised) of local community and specifically people who work with geography, topography, archeology, agriculture and geology. This situated knowledge is transformed as local memories and stories coalesce into poetic, filmic form.