Before the world needed to stop due to its survival with the current Covid-19 pandemic, this project sought to observe time and space from a poetic visualization of bodies. Using a selection of images - provided by photographers Wander Rocha, Guy Veloso and his own - Junior Franco creates a set of projections that, in partnership with the performance artist Luciana Lucena, proposes a dialogue between bodies and images in an urban aesthetic at the same time reflective and playful. Since the beginning of the project, the idea was to work with images of several photographers, in order to allow, not a single look, but a plural perspective: kaleidoscopic, perhaps, since the world is set to be seen, fragmented in lenses and looks .

Just as the bodies establish a relationship with the projections, creating new images and new spaces, the artists relate themselves through their different languages. “Art is always relational”, Bourriaud said. And it is with this thought that “Invisibilities” creates a zone of adhesions, in which each of the artists involved in the project exchanges, dialogues, corresponds with their contributions.

Through the photo essay, using the projection technique, Junior Franco captures the relationship that Luciana Lucena establishes with the images that cross and are crossed by her naked body. From this reciprocal relationship, there is a narrative that invites the eyes to a dance with new perspectives between space and corporeality. The artist presents her naked body in addition to the normative envelopes that cover nudity from a Western perspective.

In this work, the artists invite the public to perceive the subtleties of the streets in large urban centers. They invite the eyes to reflect on the occupation of this space, inventing possibilities for its reframing, not by means of the usual functionality, but by a poetics of playfulness, of affections and why not say: heterotopias? The relationship created between the projected image of the cities and the bodies that interact with them creates, in addition to a new image, a “place other” with its multiple layers of meaning. Today, due to the isolations in which the world confines itself for protection against Covid-19, the reappropriation of possible spaces is a daily challenge. In addition to being an invitation for new perspectives to explore different perspectives from everyday and habitual ones, it is a work shaped by several crossings, in which each artist prints his / her line and is surprised by the work that changes with each intervention and each affectation.


Invisibilities

“A critical portrait of  the contemporary Brazilian society, built from two iconic references in art history. A remake of the biblical scene that precedes Jesus' betrayal and crucifixion, the image characterizes social types and cultural symptoms. Gathered around the young and black Christ, interest groups and political forces interact and intend a scenario in which Liberty seems threatened. ” - Simone Rodrigues.

The Last Supper


In August 2019, during a religious event, the President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro took the stage and said:

"Submit an amendment to the Constitution and modify article 226, which says that family is male and female. And even changing that, as you cannot amend the Bible, I will continue to believe in the traditional family."

Faced with this pronouncement, the following reflection came to me: how to show, through photography, that this type of backward thinking was completely wrong? Answering this, project “Family Portrait” was borne, by portraying a scene in which these (families) would be represented in their various configurations, representations and compositions. Homo-affective families, those who consider their pets also as family members, those who remained together even in the face of the loss of the father figure and even those who decided - independently - to create a family without the figure ot the father.

The scene in question was set in the home of the subjects, more specifically in their living rooms. This configuration, or taxonomy, came from the inspiration of the German photographer couple Hilla and Bernd Becher. In the series of photographs entitled “work in progress”, the Becher couple defined a configuration that would be repeated in all images: cloudy sky, opaque light, great depth of field and frontal perspective to photograph the object in question. My version for this taxonomy was to create images where people, or family members are always on the couch (or in the absence of it, on chairs) and the photograph always done in front perspective, resembling a portrait.

An important point in the project are the people's facial expressions. Generally, when we are photographed, we are smiling in a way to represent a happy moment. Unlike that, during the photo shoots, I asked people to stay serious. This seriousness represents, in my project, the disapproval of the concept of “family” mentioned by Bolsonaro in his speech.


Family Portrait

Marielle Franco - brazilian sociologist and politician - was murdered at age 38 with four shots on the head on March 14, 2018. She defended feminism, human rights, and criticized the federal intervention in Rio de Janeiro and the Military Police, having reported several cases of abuse of authority by police against residents of poor communities.

The images bellow were registered on March 16, 2018, one day after the first public act in memory of Marielle in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The intention was to document the urban interventions made by the protesters, since these interventions would be removed or erased by orders given by the government.

Who killed Marielle? So far, the crime remains unsolved .

Marielle, present!

This project is a deconstruction of the History of Art considering all the issues that we have in the current century. For that, we have to demystify the concept of the sacred in works of art and show that today there are much more poignant problematizations, such as: the issue of gender, social inequality, racial prejudice, the deterioration of health in the search for the ideal body, etc. My questioning is a contemporary view by rethinking these works.

I want to break here some prejudices, perfections and dazzles that we learn through Classical Art. We have been practically catechized over the years with the following concepts: the perfect body is the ideal body, the perfect skin is the ideal skin, the perfect behaviors and manners are the ideal. Really?

Influenced by the visual artist Joan Fontcuberta, I invite the viewer to look beyond the work of art, now transformed into a photograph of saturated colors and high contrasts that, sometimes, shows and hide bodies between clothes and scenery. It is a new reality, idealistic or not, endowed with skins marked by the influences of our days.

The way I found to make this paradigm break was to provoke the observer. Producing a photograph that activates consciences, that produces reactions and that invites the public to reflect. But how does it happen? Through the cognitive illusion that makes your brain unable to differentiate what is the body - real - and what is the image - idealized.

People inserted in the scenes become part of them (scenes) taking the place of the characters, mimicking their movements, behaviors and expressions. This insertion can cause a strangeness; but, when looking carefully, it can be observed that a new image was created there, an “other image”, loaded with new concepts and new meanings.

But after all, what in our life is real? What is ideal? Ideal for whom?


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JUNIOR FRANCO