As part of the Transformative Territories project, artist Kenia de Aguiar Ribeiro has been leading a territorial photography residency at the Instituto Terra e Memória (ITM) since October 2024. Her challenge is to establish a connection between the photographic narrative of sacred sites and the reality of the wildfires that have shaped the history of Mação.
The first stage of the project involved a photographic inventory of sites considered sacred in the eight parishes that make up the municipality of Mação. This survey was carried out in collaboration with researchers from the Instituto Terra e Memória (ITM).
Based on this mapping, the artist-in-residence began her fieldwork, documenting sites with spiritual and cultural significance for local communities. Among the photographed locations are chapels, rustic altars, rock engravings, megalithic monuments, ancient bridges, votive crosses, consecrated markers, as well as natural elements such as streams and remarkable geological formations.
The ultimate goal of this collection of images is to create a photographic narrative linking the sacredness of these sites to the resilience and regeneration of the territory after the wildfires.
The actions undertaken by the artist and those of local community members will come together in a point of convergence, culminating in an exhibition presented during the APHELEIA seminar, a major international event to be held in April in Mação.
About artist Kenia de Aguiar Ribeiro
Kenia de Aguiar Ribeiro is both a photojournalist and an archaeologist. She holds a degree in Communications from the University of Brasília (Brazil) and a degree in Archaeology and Art History from the University of Paris-Sorbonne (France). In Portugal, she earned a master’s degree in Prehistoric Archaeology and Rock Art at the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar. Her research, conducted in Spain, focused on an early 20th-century photographic collection documenting the petroglyphs of Galicia, exploring photography as a medium that bridges art and science. This work has been presented at conferences in Brazil and Spain.
While in Portugal, Kenia completed a photographic residency at the Center for Photographic Studies in Tomar (CEFT), where she documented behind-the-scenes moments of the “Festa dos Tabuleiros,” one of Portugal’s most traditional festivals and part of its intangible cultural heritage. Professionally, she has produced photographic reports for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Brazil’s National Confederation of Municipalities. In New York, she studied street photography at the International Center of Photography (ICP). Her work has been exhibited in South Africa, France, Portugal, and various cities across Brazil.
Read more at the partner’s website : https://www.pacadnetwork.com/itm/
