Dona Ana’s studio lies in Petrolina, a Nordest city of Brazil, where she is speaking to her friend Edson Barrus, who is copying documents for her while I film in the courtyard. The courtyard opens out into one of the city’s access roads.

It’s 42 degrees Celsius.



Dona Ana das Carrancas is an artist in her eighties. All her life she has made “carrancas”; fired clay figures inspired by the wooden figureheads that used to adorn the bows of ships to ward off demons and robbers. When she is not producing “carrancas” she produces everyday items. A black artist living in an impoverished surroundings, Dona Ana was always politically-minded., actively involved in education and literacy campaigns as well as the spread of popular culture, even so she too is illiterate. She has set up venues for all kind of artistic and cultural activities. The mayor of Petrolina had a cultural center build so that Dona Ana could work and live with her family. She moves in five years ago. Edson Barrus has known her all his life, and visits her whenever he is in town. Dona Ana has had a decisive influence on both his understanding of art and the way he views himself as an artist.

On this January afternoon, I found myself in the courtyard of the studio while a carranca was being made. Edson Barrus and Dona Ana had said they wanted to start documenting her work soon. Meanwhile, I carried on shooting; moving across the courtyard and onto the street. It was then I discovered the incredible arrangement of a series of vanishing lines. Although I didn’t have a tripod with me, I decided to film what I saw; not from the street, but from the courtyard, where the doors and columns by the entrance formed a frame that I was keen to use.

I shot about 40 minutes, only half on which I used for the film. In spite of the heat, I was fascinated by what was happening in front of my eyes, less by the microcosm that presented itself than by the way this image shaped my awareness of events and dead moments. I was gripped not as much by the strangeness of this place or the behavior of these two people than by questions about how this visual space was structured and used, or rather, how cognitive surroundings are changed when a space is sliced up in a very specific manner. I am interested in how directions can simultaneously come together end drift apart in a predefined space that delimits –literally frames- the viewer’s field of vision.

yann beauvais

Distribution: Light Cone