The Photographic Lens as Cultural Critique: Writings of the Body in Cicatriz, by Rosangela Rennó

Abstract

Rosangela Rennó’s photographic exhibition Cicatriz (Scar) (1996) introduces a disturbing search into the House of Detention’s photographic collection, in São Paulo. The institutional files looks like a stagnant combination of inertia and both official and group stigma until the moment when Rennó seeks the affection, the poetry, the sign’s revolt and resistance that can denounce a muted Other. The photograph, then, reveal the cultural tissue which previously could not be named: the previously misty image begins to work in an area of repression, open in its distressing condition that erases the boundaries considered rational and homogeneous. A harrowing set of prisoner’s tattoos is presented and demonstrate the painful writings of a subordinate Self. From the deconsecration of the photographic mirror a land is opened for the reading of epithelial texts healed as discourses anointed in marginal flesh.