Sorbonne Artgallery

The visual journey of the Brazilian artist Rodrigo Braga is intimately linked to the natural ecosystems he invests. For a long time inscribed in the singular topography of his country of origin, he has more recently moved away from it by integrating a diversity of geographical environments. His images depict the intimate hand-to-hand contact between man and nature. From this conflict are born symbolically strong images, which show the porosity of the borders between human, animal, plant, and the resulting disturbances. At the heart of this conflict, his own body is often present, in the density of the forest, or in the bowels of the earth.
 

For his exhibition at the Sorbonne Artgallery, we propose to retrace this journey, through a selection of his production over twenty years of his career. The nine photographs presented here do not respond to a chronological logic, but seek, through iconic images, to achieve a synthesis of the immersive thoughts and practices of the artist. They are fragments of a non-linear story, told through bodies, rocks, and plants, which denote the obvious fractures of the times we live in. In a way, this retrospective gaze, acutely reflects the question of the anthropocene, at a time when humanity is tending towards the exhaustion of its resources and the collapse of its presence on earth. But these photographs also bear witness to a personal, and therefore subjective, vision of the world at a given time. Sometimes aggressive, sometimes tender, they bear witness to the ambivalence of the predatory or protective impulses that link us to the living.