Lívia Melzi on care & resistance in her practice


“ I like Nicholas Mirzoeff's concept of counter-visuality.  Mirzoeff talks about visual tactics that allow us to question the dominant visual order. Like him, I do not believe that domination is absolute, and I find that photography is a wonderful tool to talk about power, especially through non-frontal gestures. I prefer discreet gestures.


The idea of resistance in my work perhaps applies to images that are constructed to be one single story, which - in turn - resists within our subjectivity. Images are not naive, and for me, there is an act of resistance every time I ask myself, in front of an archive: how, why, who? I think it is not me who resists, but the images themselves that are inexhaustible.

Perhaps there is a process of personal healing in revisiting images from the colonial era, in thinking about how Brazilian identity was constructed. It is an intimate path as well, because I always wonder which side I am on, how I position myself towards certain images.”

︎ More about Lívia’s work on her website: www.iviamelzi.com