Lucas Simões

Lucas Simões is a Brazilian experimental artist based in São Paulo.  His images and sculptures look at deconstructing and manipulating an image or object to create new meaning, using many different materials including maps, books and photographs. (Simões, n.d.) Simões uses many different techniques when manipulating his portraits; he has burnt, layered, cut and distorted his work to create strange portraits where the subject is often left unrecognisable.

Simões has made four similar series from 2009 to 2010, which involve burning the images that he finds; these are Adios, Ausência (Absence), Nostalgia and ‘Quem brinca com fogo’ (Who play with fire). In all these series, Simões appropriates photographs from different sources, and then burns away areas of the image, usually the face, to make the viewer analyse the image left behind and guess what information was removed with the flames.   Simões has the same description for all these series on his website; stating that burning pictures is a way of physically erasing a memory, and that in time the part of the image that was burnt will be permanently lost from memory. (Simões, 2009)

These images all connote memory attached to photographs and how the two things can sometimes be mistaken for the same thing. When we look at old photographs of ourselves, we sometimes wonder if we remember that moment that was captured on camera, or do we think we remember the moment only because it was photographed and we have a visual reference from which to create memories with? Simões is trying to prove the latter point by stating that once part of the image is gone, that part will also be lost from your memory.

I can be influenced by Simões’ work in many ways; not only does he use a similar technique to what I want to achieve (although I want to burn my negatives rather than my prints) but his concept is also along similar lines. Simões wants to prove that erasing an image will also erase the memory behind it, and I want to see whether the viewer can still understand a person’s identity from what’s left behind.

From the series ‘Nostalgia’, 2009.

SIMOES. L, n.d. About Lucas Simões [Online] [Viewed 21st Feb] Available from: http://www.lucassimoes.com.br/About-lucas-simoes

SIMOES. L, 2009. Adios [Online] [Viewed 21st Feb] Available from: http://www.lucassimoes.com.br/Adios