Os Encantados
Romane Iskaria
Nominated by
FOMU
In “Os Encantados”, meaning “The Enchanted Ones”, the photographer Romane Iskaria depicts the lives of the descendants of the Quilombo communities living in a sacred area called « Land of Jurema » in the Northeast of Brazil. The Quilombos are made up of territories with a black ethnic majority, located in rural and urban areas, which have kinship ties and ancestral links with the time of slavery. These communities define themselves according to their relationships with the land, ancestral heritage and cultural practices and fight for possession of their territory. Even today, they suffer the lingering consequences of colonialism and struggle to preserve their lands and ancestral culture.
The land of Jurema, according to the writer Sandro Guimarães de Salles in his book « In the Shadow of the Enchanted Jurema », is a place of spiritual importance where the veil between the worlds is porous, the author lists ten sacred places in the Northeast region as “invisible cities”.
Jurema's spirituality has spread throughout Brazil, transforming itself into a transnational religiosity composed of a whole symbolic, representative and cultural apparatus, which has the Enchanted as its raison d'être and cultural entities. Through encounters linked to her own heritage and family history, Romane Iskaria deploys the notion of landscape as a space for encounters and sharing, to reflect on cohesion and question dominant narratives.
These communities are deprived of the possibility of defining themselves both culturally and geographically. Jurema, as a non- physical territory, represents an invisible space that transcends the boundary between the material world and the intangible. It is an individual place and a collective good, shared by the members of the Quilombos, and which they cannot see taken away from them, because it constitutes a fundamental element of their identity and resistance.
No items found.
The Artist
Romane Iskaria
Nominated in
2024
By
FOMU
Lives and Works in
Brussels Belgium
Romane Iskaria is a French photographer and artist based in Brussels, Belgium (1997). The photographer highlights the injustices and inequalities of invisible communities with a documentary and fictional approach. Her images, specific to “Care”, tell a story and allow her subjects to become aware of their painful stories. She creates a connection with these subjects that goes beyond the simple link between the photographer and her model.
The artist uses photography and the field of video, but also textiles, sound, and sculpture to create immersive installations. She tells stories that take the form of a long-term investigation across several territories. Romane replays specific rituals and stories that also transcend borders, addressing questions around migration and exile. The photographer creates plastic forms allowing her to subvert the codes of documentary.
She graduated with a Master's degree in photography from ENSAV La Cambre in 2022 and a DNA (National Diploma in Plastic Arts) from INSEAAM Beaux Arts in Marseille in 2018. She also completed an exchange at the U-LAVAL Visual Arts school in Quebec, Canada. Romane is laureate of TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, by FOMU Fotomuseum Antwerpen and the european platform FUTURES Photography. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions: in the United States (ART-ARK Gallery in San Jose, California; Assyrian Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.), in Brazil (João Pessoa Paraíba Nordeste Art Gallery of the Energisa Institute), in France (Circulation(s) Cent-Quatre Festival in Paris, Lille Art-Up Centre Photographique in Lille, La Grande Vitrine Gallery in Arles, HLM Gallery in Marseille), in Belgium (FOMU Fotomuseum Antwerp, S.M.A.K Museum in Ghent, House of European History Brussels, TAMAT Museum in Tournai, BPS22, Art-Brussels Off, Prix Médiatine, Hangar Art Photo Center, TICK-TACK Gallery, Tiny-Gallery, Fondation Carrefour des Arts), in Armenia (French Consulate in Yerevan), in Italy (L’Asilo in Naples), and in the Netherlands (Flemish Cultural Center). Brakke-grond, Noorderlicht Festival). Romane was selected as part of the call for projects launched by Polka Magazine and Kickstarter for the creation and support of an artist's book, with the self-publishing of her first work, "Assyrians," in a print run of 300 copies in 2022. The book "Assyrians" was also a winner of the Belgian Photo Books selection, presented at the Rencontres d'Arles in July 2022.
More projects by this artist
2022
Assyrians
Romane collected testimonies from members of the Assyrian community between Belgium and France, complementing the stories of her own grandfather and the notebooks of her great-grandfather who arrived in France from Iran. The photographer conducted an investigation by gathering the stories of this diaspora composed of different generations. Objects transported during exile, family photos, traditional outfits for festivals, figurines of protective figures from ancient Mesopotamia, landscapes, and maps appear. By blending past and present, Romane photographs by intuition and also uses fiction to evoke this quest for origins present in each of us. A project to keep a memory, a trace. To portray a scattered people trying to preserve their connections despite the distance. The members of the community fled their countries: Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran. What traces? What memories do they keep of their lands? How to rebuild elsewhere? Are they assimilated in the country where they are? How to perpetuate their culture and language: Aramaic? A collective memory is created through these voices that tell her. Romane then went to the Tur Abdin region in Turkey on the border with Syria. If this community had a country it would be in this territory between Syria, Turkey and Iran.Cradle of the Assyrian community. The photographer followed a group of young French and Belgian people to return to their roots for the first time in the land of their ancestors. Throughout the villages she met people who came to rebuild their houses. Between myth and return to basics, the photographer creates a symbolic territory through this people in search of landmarks. What are these links that provide a feeling of belonging to spaces and communities? Do countries really own the territories they inhabit? What other territories are possible?
Similar projects by everyone else
%2520se%2520elas%2520houverem%252C%2520a%2520gente%2520vai%2520tira%25CC%2581-las%25E2%2580%259D_001.jpeg)
Newsletter