In the exhibition “To see in the dark”, Laercio Redondo returns to the question of collective memory and its erasure through four different readings inspired by fragments from the artist’s personal archive collected over the past 17 years. These fragments were garnered on different occasions where these materials, which were originally intended for disposal, would have been left to deteriorate or to disappear altogether.

The exhibition consists of photographs, letters, text and a film that form a delicate web of supposed echoes of the past resonating in the present. All the components of the exhibition – a letter written in German, dated 1942, that the artist found floating in the sea a Greek port in 2006; a series of photos of a couple taking pictures of each other on holiday; portraits of a daughter who never returns to her parents’ home during World War II; a fragment of a Super 8 film of a debutante ball in 1974 – are presented in a reworking of their original context and supports. These seemingly scattered histories of people and distant places encourage a reading of a collective history from the singular point of view attributed to each of these characters.

The exhibition, which opens on November 23rd, also features an original text by philosopher Pedro Duarte on the issues raised by vestiges of the past that echo in the present, in a dialogue with the artworks in the exhibition.