Filipe Branquinho, Interior Landscapes (2011-2014)

Published in Telling Time, Rencontres de Bamako 10th edition, exhibition catalogue, November 2015

 

Filipe Branquinho, Interior Landscapes (2011-2014), Cine África, WC, Maputo, 2014. Image (c) the artist. via popcap15.picturk.com

An artist and formally trained architect, Filipe Branquinho’s eye for architectural form and principles of design seeps through his photography. In the series Interior Landscapes (2011 – 2014), the artist documents the interiors of Maputo’s public buildings. Classrooms and libraries, cinemas and radio stations, are suspended between past events and futures that have yet to unfold. Drawn from a larger body of work on the city’s architectural heritage, Interior Landscapes consists of forty images in total, each of which uniquely stages a conjuncture of internal and external worlds.

Although there are no people present, many of the objects depicted carry indications of a human past―a leather chair left crumpled by a now absent sitter, a half-filled glass of wine, and a scribbled line of chalk, all indicate a human touch. The relation- ship between people and the spaces they inhabit is a resurfacing theme. Branquinho deliberately negates nostalgia through his foregrounding of architectural features and his choice of intense colour over black and white. Public space is positioned as a site of individual and collective memory, yet the images are shot with an unyielding directness that defers any sense of sentimentality or personal subjectivity.

The vivid and colorful spaces index the fashions of interior design, as they rise and fade with shades of paint. Repetition of form is found in tiled floors, ceilings and tabletops, while rows of seating add texture to the artist’s careful attention to symmetry. Interior Landscapes guides our vision through doorways and across great halls, enticed by what lies just beyond the realm of vision, as natural lightpours in through uncovered windows.

Filipe Branquinho 

Born in 1977 in Maputo, Mozambique– Lives in Maputo