Joana Moedas

This work is a re-enactment of collective trauma as a physical memory. Inspired by the Pedrógão Grande Wildfires (Portugal, 2017), the installation is comprised of wax sculptural copies of objects taken from the scene. Emulating materials like rubber and metal, often perceived as durable, they are subverted into fragility; rendered impermanent and inevitably melting away. Re-arranged by performers throughout the exhibition, the work becomes an act of remembering and re-mapping the traumatic as a collective experience, questioning the infrastructures of safety we believe keep us secure and how we cope when they fail us.

A painting part of the 'wax promise' installation

The work is a house-shaped wooden structure covered entirely in synthetic hair, emitting a constant flux of fog amidst a glowing orange light. As the viewer approaches the 'house', sounds of creaking wood and fire can be heard coming from inside. Part of the ongoing research into the infrastructures of safety that serve as foundations for living, serving to question the inextricable connections we form with these objects and ideals of protection.

Part of the 'recollection' series, the works act as fragments of a larger, distant narrative. Based on archival and personal photographs of a dying distant relative, elements of this foreign memory are painted on two dimensional surfaces, grasping at the emotional spaces between viewer and disappearing recollections.

Part of the 'recollection' series, furniture seen in the original archive photographs is blown up and recreated in two dimensional objects that take up physical space.

A still from the performance and short film 'Bringing the house home'.