FERNANDA NAMAN
Exhibition: Someone, Somewhere (2022)
Fernanda Naman is an aesthete by nature. In her photographs, the artist creates an image universe that starts from her attentive look at the world around her, always in search of images that can humanize relationships with the surroundings, from the micro to the macro. As if she guided us in an exercise of making us think about how we look at things, it says a lot about how we build our perceptions, about ourselves and about others.
However, this exhibition is based on Fernanda's attentive look at the last few years that have touched us intensely, in order to give new meaning to moments of isolation and social distancing in other perspectives, such as that of the community and the recovery of internal memories. .
An example of this mediation is the series Floating - Bubbles (2020). Upon first contact with the images, my gaze immediately turned to something internal and cellular, as if we needed to look at the smallest particles that make us up in order to see the whole. At the same time, the images also suggest the idea of coexistence. It is in these dualities that Fernanda's works, presented here, establish a place of interest, so that the artist begins to guide us in a kind of mediation between the internal and external.
And this mediation is also given as we walk through the images and observe the color gradation that is formed. Starting with the black background and a marking of darker contrasts, the photographs gain a lighter and more colorful tone, which can be understood metaphorically in this internal dive, which at first seems frightening to us, but which later reveals itself in new possibilities of existence.
In Extremos - Paisagens (2017 - 2019), the artist once again puts us in dialogue about these inside/outside, internal/external relationships. Faced with the impossibility of envisioning new landscapes, how can we seek meaning in a world based on experiences already lived? In this way, Fernanda rescues travel images that, in principle, are antagonistic, but which here present themselves in a complementary way. And it is in this search for an answer between how our personal experiences relate to collective experiences that the artist guides us through an image narrative that, although very particular, is super aligned with one of the most contemporary questions: what is the new normal?
By setting us in motion on these themes, one of the possible responses raised by the artist is the search for balance, which in this exhibition Fernanda celebrates based on the meditative state that her photographs place us in. And it is exactly through this connection proposed by the artist that we can create new possibilities for the future and search for the new images we want to create. For us and for the world.
Carollina Lauriano
Exhibition: 11 Years of Wishes (2018)
The photographic series Desires, initially created in 2007, addresses a long-discussed question: What is the driving force of material desire? Power? Status? Self esteem? Self-affirmation? Lack?
What inspired me to create this series was people's reactions to the shop windows, a symbol of consumption that inevitably makes me question why do people want things? What pleasure does this bring? Is this pleasure ephemeral or can it last even after it is conquered?
And if not conquered, what frustration does this entail? How small do we feel when faced with the inability to fulfill a consumer desire? Or on the contrary, if we know that it is within our reach, do we understand the importance of the “state of desire”?
The point is, when it is attended to, something is lost. Often, desire gives way to emptiness. Or else, it gives way to a new desire.
At a time when people are so disconnected from their spiritual values, it seems that simply consuming increases self-esteem and gives the false feeling that it fills empty spaces and fills emotional needs.
It's a difficult task to find its real meaning, but if it gives us pleasure, what's the harm in that?
Life is made up of small pleasures and big desires.
Fernanda Naman
Exhibition: Desires (2011)
At the beginning of this year, I got involved in a charity project and went to some galleries and houses of artist friends to ask for donations for an auction. In Applied Art, generously, Sabina de Libman, opened up to me the choice of several works from her collection. I chose three, one of them a photograph of the facade of a haute couture house in Paris, with a small female silhouette in the foreground. The charm resulted mainly from the use of a simple resource (increasing the exposure time and rotating the zoom while the diaphragm is open), thus creating a movement of blurred shapes and lights and a certain atmosphere of fantasy – if not mystery. Only later did I learn that the author was Fernanda Naman, whose young paintings I had seen a few years ago.
Several of the photos in this exhibition are sisters to the one I mentioned. They only slightly expand the manipulation of reality – since the silhouettes are produced separately from the background and later introduced with Photoshop. The same program is used for other effects, in other works, and since art is essentially artifice, fiction, lies, there is no problem with that – of course. Throughout the history of art, new techniques have naturally enriched its domains, and they are all valuable, when used well. The devil is when the artist loses his edge and limits, abuses the effects, and/or adheres to a new academicism. In current photography, blurring for the sake of blurring, for example, has become a simple fashion recipe.
Fortunately, Fernanda escapes her and the impoverishing formulas. He is in search of his own discoveries, sensibly, without complicating or refining. If I like some more than others (this is subjective), all in all I can only praise this first solo photography exhibition. Happy with the talent and competence of the young artist, I wish her good work and well-deserved success.
Olívio Tavares de Araújo