With just a little luck, you will never fall in love again

“The body which will be loved is in advance selected and manipulated by the lens, subjected to a kind of zoom effect which magnifies it, brings it closer, and leads the subject to press his nose to the glass: is it not the scintillating object which a skillful hand causes to shimmer before me and will hypnotize me, capture me?”
– Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Going through my archive of photos taken by ex-boyfriends, I discovered myself as an object of the other's gaze. I selected the portraits in which I directly view the photographer/lover and cropped each image around my face to the proportions of identity documents.

By enlarging the photographs, the definition fades and the blur serves as a metaphor for the uncertainties of memory. Even with reduced definition, the gaze turned towards the viewer remains present and establishes a new moment of intimacy, this time between the portrayed individual and her many observers.

"With just a little luck..." took part in the group exhibition "Expanding the gesture", held in August 2023 at Lux Espaço de Arte in São Paulo. Seven artists experiment with the possibilities of materialising images.