The work of Letícia Ramos (Santo Antônio da Patrulha - Rio Grande do Sul, 1976) stems from a weaving of researches and projects geared towards recording technology and the recreation of motion in image formation. The artist, who builds her own photographic apparatus in the polar opposite of simple image capturing, also deals with projection systems that she herself develops for her video installations. Invariably, what she seems to desire is images produced by her own object, rather than just any image.

Letícia took part in the Southern Panoramas competitive exhibition of the 16th Videobrasil, in 2007, with her work Panorâmica 01 (2007). One of her notable exploratory inventions is a 1.20-meter-long, 1.10-meter-wide pinhole camera. It is made of wood, aluminium, iron, and cloth, and its head system, in which the film is stored, was taken from a piece of Parvo photographic equipment dating from the 19th century. The camera has twenty-four holes, which produce twenty-four images at once and from one single place, but from different perspectives, giving rise to multiple superimpositions and materializing in one single, panoramic, 1.20-meter negative image.

From displaced points of view atop buildings, through hidden gaps in the urban landscape, or through the suspension of time that passes near the ground, the horizon line that Letícia draws in front of the camera is capable of evoking memories of a few emblematic scenes from films as far apart in time asMetropolis, by Fritz Lang (1927), or Blade Runner, by Ridley Scott (1982). Like a mysterious vision that changes the depth of field, from a futuristic-vintage perspective, the two cities set apart by the top and bottom floors are unified by the artist’s set of works, as if by science fiction codes.

And it is precisely the habit of building images as one erects the monuments in the city that is a passenger of time—designed by the imprecise memories of its inhabitants—that defines the three works by Letícia Ramos that are comprised in Cidade infinita, a critical review of the collection-cum-curated programme.

Further info on this artist available at the collection