Rita Dias Bolieiro – Oranges & Elixir
This summer – like many – I tested positive for Covid-19.
I was in my hometown in the Azores, where the rule was that you were only allowed to leave isolation once you got back 2 negative tests.
What would be a short sojourn, turned into a two-month stay in the island, spending one entire month in isolation.
At each new positive test – and, consequently, each extra week of isolation – I seemed to plunge into a deeper hole from which I could no longer see the light. I was unable to conceive an ending – or new beginning – I lost the ability to plan, imagine or yearn for anything.
Mostly asymptomatic, the frustration of isolating from everything and everyone when, physically, I felt essentially fine became my biggest prison. To have become as though radioactive, when I felt the same as always.
This series narrates my journey and attempt to accept The Absurd and equally serves (and served) as a means to better comprehend who I am in and out of isolation, in and out of the island.
About Rita
Rita Bolieiro (1996, S.Miguel, Açores) is currently based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has a Master’s Degree in Film & Photographic Studies from Leiden University with a completed elective course of Photography at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK). As an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary artist, her interest in writing, academia, and philosophy is usually translated into her visual work. At the same time, when she writes, she never fully abandons visuality. Resulting from her connection with her island, nature and the sublime are her biggest inspirations. Nonetheless, she defines her work as instinctive and as an exercise of observation. She studies, questions, and analyzes what surrounds and attracts her, particularly the absurd and the extent to which individuals naturally and subconsciously merge themselves with the landscape that encircles them. As a result of her amethodical method, rather than series and projects, her visual work frequently renders into loose images.
Sound design: Miguel Garcia