Rosângela Rennó Gomes

Place: Belo Horizonte

Born: 1962

Biography:

Rosângela Rennó Gomes is a Brazilian artist born in Belo Horizonte, MG, in 1962. She currently lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Rennó's work consists of photographic images from public and private archives, which she uses to question the nature of an image and its symbolic value. She works mostly with installations, objects, and photographs, appropriating and shedding new light on an anonymous body of photographs and negatives found in flea markets, family albums, newspapers, and archives. Rennó's interest in discarded images and her habit of collecting have been decisive in establishing her work strategies. She aims to generate interest in what she calls 'the little stories of the downtrodden and the vanquished,' focusing on the 'inglorious' episodes of history and the shameful events of the past that successive Brazilian political regimes would like to gloss over. Rennó does not take photographs herself, instead recycling existing photographs of this kind. Her decision to recycle photographs is influenced by the ideas of Czech photo-theorist Vilém Flusser and German photographer and theorist Andreas Muller Pohle.