ELA DEPOIS DE FAZER ESTRAGOS by Hilda Reis

The individual exhibition ELA DEPOIS DE FAZER ESTRAGOS by Hilda Reis will open on December 5, from 6 pm. to 8.30 pm.
The exhibition will be on display until January 3 and the admission is free.

My path is increasingly one of damage. Using lost photographs, which form the basis of my work, I practice the exercise of damage. I know that a remnant of the original always remains, perhaps blurred, and the pleasure lies in this gesture that destroys something in order to give birth to something else. After all, who is the artist? Me, the photographer, or the people photographed who continue to live on through these fragments?

There is a melancholic fascination in this collection for small pieces of abandoned paper. They were once loved and cherished; now they serve no purpose. Photo albums, stamp collections, letters, clippings, bills, documents that, upon losing those who cared for them, also lost their meaning.

Someone once preserved what was an important memory, and someone else later decided it was no longer valuable. This abandonment moves me: each piece of paper is an extension of us, almost a validation of our existence. I keep my papers, and I also keep those of others, treating them like a scientist protecting a fragile molecule, the molecule of memory.

I respect these documents and am honored to hold the stories of strangers in my hands. I want to pay tribute to them, play with them, ruin them as someone who celebrates the memory of others. The work already existed before my gesture; what I add is this damage that is displayed here. Consider yourselves accomplices when looking at the pieces.

BIOGRAPHY

Hilda Reis (b. 1972) finds her main form of expression in collage.
In her studio in Miramar, near Porto, the city where she was born, she develops her research based on lost photographs, ownerless albums, and all kinds of materials such as letters, magazines, lace, water bills, and everything else that might be found in a disused drawer. All her works are unique and unrepeatable, always analog, and are intended as a tribute to ownerless, lost, orphaned photographs.

She studied art and lived in Germany and Sweden for 10 years, where she took part in several exhibitions. Since 2017, when she returned to Portugal, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, notably at Largo Residências in Lisbon, Casa das Artes and Galeria Mariana Mendes Delgado in Porto, and Centro Cultural Matadero in Madrid.

Her works are part of collections in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Portugal.