Instituto Terra e Memória research-creation project centred on the artistic research of Kenia de Aguiar Ribeiro, a photojournalist and archaeologist whose work bridges visual art, cultural heritage, and scientific inquiry. Her residency, hosted by the Instituto Terra e Memória, explored how landscapes marked by forest fires could be understood through their spiritual, cultural, and symbolic dimensions. Her work connected sacred sites with the lived realities of fire-affected territories, creating a visual language that addressed loss, endurance, and regeneration.
Since October 2024, Kenia conducted a photographic residency in Mação, beginning with the mapping of sites of spiritual and cultural significance across the municipality’s eight parishes, in collaboration with ITM researchers and local heritage specialists. She documented chapels, altars, rock art, megaliths, Roman bridges, votive crosses, consecrated landmarks, and prominent natural features, approaching these sites as living markers of collective memory in a landscape repeatedly reshaped by fire. The photographs were organised into a visual narrative linking sacredness, territorial resilience, and post-fire recovery.
The residency culminated in a photographic exhibition at the Museum of Prehistory and Sacred Art of the Tagus Valley, presented during the Apheleia Seminar (April 2025). The exhibition proposed a renewed reading of Mação, connecting sacred sites with fire-affected landscapes, and invited the local community to reflect on continuity, resilience, and the capacity of territories to regenerate materially and symbolically.
Kenia’s research continues through the photography exhibition Transformative Territories – Utopia, currently hosted at Vila Nova da Barquinha Secondary School. This exhibition presents narratives arising from field observation, community dialogue, and long-term engagement with fire-affected landscapes in the Médio Tejo region. Developed with the CIAAR and ITM, it functions as both an artistic and educational intervention, fostering debate on living in transforming territories and highlighting the role of individual and collective actions in shaping resilient landscapes.
Kenia de Aguiar Ribeiro’s residency and exhibitions demonstrate how art can illuminate ecological crises, linking sacred heritage, collective memory, and resilience. Her photographic practice creates spaces for reflection, hope, and renewed relationships with the land, exemplifying research–creation as a tool for territorial transformation.
Read more on our partners website: https://institutoterramemoria.org/itm/
