MARIA ISABEL OLIVEIRA

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"As long as you do not return" As long as you do not come back is the way I found to show admiration and missing for those who are part of our lives, who have become part of us. An essay where people represent their homesickness, be it from someone, from some moment or space, bringing closeness to what seemingly distant. I intend with this essay to bring out all that and those we miss, but we do not know how to say, just feel.

The photographed is in the scene as an adjunct, giving life to the impalpable, the “saudade”. It's like saying "you're still in me, I'm still in you." I represent my late grandmother Senira in the garden, surrounded by her flowers.  An ex-boyfriend represents his mother in the distant past inside an old wardrobe. In an old apartment, I relive an old "I" trapped in the walls of memory of a time that does not come back anymore. As long as you do not come back, I'm joking to transform myself into you, invading your space, between the seams of your clothes, between the walls of this missing. 

We are the people we know, the loves that warm our chest, the moments we keep in our pockets.  If we are what we are, it is because we did not create us ourselves.