Olaf Heine is a photographer of portraits, feelings and nations.
BRAZIL, a portrait of a nation is an exhibition project featuring works by German photographer Olaf Heine, produced by Ruth & Pedrina Cult and curated by Analize Nicolini. The exhibition was approved under Brazil’s Federal Cultural Incentive Law / PRONAC — PRONAC 190066, Process 01400.000113/2019-83, Article 18, Patronage — with an approved budget of R$ 396,011.70.
The project planned to present 68 photographic works produced by Olaf Heine between 2010 and 2014, bringing together a contemporary portrait of Brazil through black-and-white images. The exhibition proposal approached photography as a language capable of displacing stereotypes, revealing cultural and social nuances of the country and making visible an image of Brazil that is at once intimate, architectural, bodily, landscape-based and symbolic.
The exhibition was planned for Paço Imperial, in Rio de Janeiro, from November 11, 2020 to February 7, 2021, as part of the cultural centre’s official programme. As a public dissemination action, the project also planned to project the works onto the façade of the Copan Building in São Paulo, an emblem of Brazilian modernist architecture designed by Oscar Niemeyer, with audiovisual documentation and online circulation.
The proposal combined exhibition-making, free admission, physical and content accessibility, public formation and the international promotion of photography as art. Its objectives included contributing to the circulation of a contemporary image of the Brazilian nation, promoting international cultural relations, valuing photography professionals and preserving, through the artist’s vision, records of material and immaterial dimensions of Brazil’s cultural, architectural and natural heritage.
Within Analize Nicolini’s trajectory, BRAZIL, a portrait of a nation marks an important stage in her work as a curator, cultural producer and articulator of international projects. The project brings together curatorial research, executive production, public funding through fiscal incentive, institutional dialogue, exhibition design, accessibility and the public circulation of images.