Aline Motta’s work is at once deeply personal yet historically expansive, a haunting meditation on loss, family, and the possibility of attending to history itself. Part of a larger project that includes a performance and a book, A água é uma máquina do tempo / Water Is a Time Machine begins with an address to the artist’s mother, the start of a longer exploration of her matrilineal line—from her mother to her great-great grandmother—all of whom lived in Rio de Janeiro. Weaving together the recent and the distant past, archival and oral history, documented fact and informed speculation, Motta explores the gaps that exist in official records, tying personal narrative to Brazil’s political, social, and racial history.
The work features sweeping aerial views of present-day Rio de Janeiro as well as photographs that document the city at the turn of the twentieth century, which are overlaid with writings and mementos from the artist’s family archive. Accompanying this feature is Não corte os negativos / Do Not Cut the Negatives, a video loop featuring the artist’s mother. While at first glance the image seems to be simply an old photograph, it is in fact animated—the woman blinks, breathes, waits. Together, these works bend the conventions of narrative film to explore time, intergenerational ties, and history.
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Aline Motta, A água é uma máquina do tempo / Water Is a time Machine (2023) and Não corte os negativos / Do Not Cut the Negatives (2023) is part of the Contemporary Film, Video, and Sound Series, which features a rotating selection of works focusing on alternative archives. The series is curated by Katja Rivera, Curator of Contemporary Art, and support is generously provided by The Margaret L. Lane Fund, and the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professorship in the Humanities at Colorado College.
Top image: Still from Aline Motta’s Não corte os negativos / Do Not Cut the Negatives, 2023
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