Álbum de Família

Adriana Varejão/ Anna Bella Geiger/ Bill Viola/ Candice Breitz/ Charif Benhelima/ No Olho da Rua/ Daniel W. Coburn/ Dias & Riedweg/ Fabio Morais/ Gillian Wearing/ Jonathas de Andrade/ Leonora Weissmann/ Michel Journiac/ Ricardo Basbaum/ Richard Billingham/ Rosana Palazyan/ Rosângela Rennó/ Santu Mofokeng/ Sue Williamson/ Tracey Rose/ Victor Burgin/ Zanele Muholi

The portrait has always held a privileged position in art and the family portrait, beyond its private use, has to a great extent exercised the function of asserting values that reflect and reinforce the doctrine of the family as a pillar of the society, such as lineage, patriarchal hierarchy, family cohesion and social status.

Upon the profound social transformations driven by modernity and, above all, from the second half of the 20th century onwards, with the sexual revolution, feminism, the struggle for civil and universal rights and, more recently, the retrieval and preservation of the memory of marginalized groups and minorities, the conventional family portrait has given way to myriad approaches and forms. These, by demystifying the image of the model family and its association with moral and social distinction, have favored a critical revision of this image and opened up another politics of representations, in which the very meaning of family is given to reflection.

Contemporary art manifestations respond not only to the structural variation of the family and the complex relations involved therein, but also to matters that extrapolate the inner family core. The family is often seen in correlation to the world around it, suggesting we conceive it as a constituent part of diverse issues, which may be cultural or political, economic or religious, social or psychological, and so on.

Hence, Family Album is not an exhibition of traditional family portraits – whether in their constitution as art or as sentimental documents. This group show intends to present us with this other “family album”, whose unrestrictive representations confront us with both the intimate and the social system.

Daniella Géo

Curator