Imaginary Beings - Gold
Intervention and gold leaf (22K) on inkjet print.
15 x 22,4 cm.

2022

Adopting part of the title from Jorge Luis Borges’ The book of imaginary beings, Seres imaginários, by Carla Cabanas (1979, Lisbon), is an exhibition-installation that opens the doors, on the one hand, to the private world of the artist’s memories and, on the other hand, to a speculative space of what (the constructions of) those memories might be. Continuing her investigations on the places of memory(s) and of photographic images, particularly family albums that she finds or acquires, in the construction of identity narratives, in Seres imaginários, Carla Cabanas uses exclusively and, for the first time, photographs of herself and of her family in which she intervenes to create new characters and new meanings.

By offering us images from a family album in which, by its common humanity could be ours, this exhibition-installation moves from the realm of individual and untransmissible memories to the place of collective and shared memories. In both cases, it seems to be an almost impossible task to distinguish what is real from what is fictional.

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Luísa Santos

CREDITS:

Exhibition views of Seres Imaginários at Galeria Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea, Lisboa, Portugal, 2022.
Documentation © Bruno Lopes

Exhibition views of De onde venho / Para onde volto at Espaço Adães Bermudes, Alvito, Portugal, 2023.
Documentation © Bruno Lopes

Exhibition views of Serpente Infinita at Photography Biennial of Vila Franca de Xira, curated by Ana Rito, Galeria Paulo Nunes – Arte Contemporânea, Vila Franca de Xira, 2025.
Documentation © Hugo Santos Silva