Blind Spots
Raisa Durandi
The Swiss-Brazilian Raisa Durandi searches for the meaning of cultural belonging, exploring the effects of “biographical blind spots” – periods in someone’s biography that are not covered by their own memory or by documentation such as family photographs and aural history – on the construction of individual identities.
She has worked together with four young adults, originally from Brazil and the offspring of different biological parents, who grew up within the same Swiss adoption family. Having known this patchwork family in her childhood, Raisa re-engages with them fifteen years later and initiates an unusual collaboration, which resulted in a co-created (family) self-portrait, allowing the subjects to expose themselves as they see fit, free to interpret their own representation.
The outcomes of these collaborations – found footage and newly produced photographs, video, sound and diagrams – are assembled in an interactive web-documentary, which allows for a careful examination and a thorough reconstruction of the four particular identities, starting from their (imaginary) moment of birth up to adult age. The viewer is invited to enter the private spheres of the four individuals and to reflect upon the meaning of family ties, identity construction, and the re-assessment of ethnic roots.
