Lara Pinheiro

Thesis

Lara Pinheiro (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) is a visual artist who explores self-portraiture and performance. Her work is revolved around her Brazilian heritage with an aim to reconstruct and evoke a sense of memory, place and identity.

Casa Reconstruída begins with photographs of a lush green landscape (Belo Horizonte, Brasil) to self-portraits that immerse within the land. From video stills to photographs, I pair my performative portraits with the fragmented pieces of the environment. A conversation between self and place creates its own language and the lens becomes the witness.
My connection with the land, with the earth, comes from a place of belonging. I was a year and a half old when my parents moved us to America. As an immigrant, I investigated my desire to be owned by a place being that I grew up having no place to call home. Leaving Brazil brought feelings of extreme abandonment.Through my self portraits, I am able to unite my physical connection to the very place I was born. I become an extension to my motherland.
Casa Reconstruída is presented as a two part book: a collection of images that presents itself as a performance to a compilation of my own poems that share a conversation to my central thoughts. The images are broken down into three phases that form the movement throughout the book and the poems stand independently yet it shares a direct language to the photographs.

• Personal Website

• larapinheiro.com