Jonathas de Andrade

O Peixe (The Fish)

Video, 16mm (2k), 23’, Sound 5.1, 16:9 (1.77), 2016

Courtesy of Galeria Vermelho

The video O Peixe (The Fish) depicts fishermen from a village on the northeast coast of Brazil enacting a ritual in which they embrace the fish that they have caught. Shot on 16mm film, recalling an ethnographic lens, the work hovers between myth and document. The scenes in the film, simultaneously brutal and tender, confront the viewer with the tension and pathos of the dying process, up until the fish takes its last breath. At that exact moment, the scene moves on to the next couple—man and fish—and the tension begins again, transforming this single action, through endless repetition, into a ritual. The affectionate gesture that accompanies the passage of death is a testament to a relationship between species that is imbued with strength, violence and domination.

Artist's bio

Artist Jonathas de Andrade (b. 1982, Maceió, Brazil) currently lives and works in Recife. He uses photography, installation and video to traverse collective memory and history, making use of strategies that shuffle fiction and reality. Many of de Andrade’s works consider how Brazilian national identity and labour conditions have been constructed against a backdrop of colonialism and slavery. He collects and catalogues images, texts, architectures and life stories to recompose personal narratives of the past.