This project is a meeting between image and memory, past and present, flesh and spirit of the African diaspora in Brazil. Each photographed body carries a story. Each gaze holds a time, a pain, a heritage, an ancestral joy. More than portraits, these are living presences crossing centuries of resistance, imposed silence, and continuous reinvention.
The term crimson evokes the deep tone of spilled blood, but also the red that pulses — as flame, as vital force. Here, memory is not merely remembrance: it is continuity, bridge, re-existence. Beside each image, there is a voice, a fragment of memory, a gesture that refuses to disappear. These are echoes of family stories, knowledge passed down through generations, and scars left by a Brazil that tries to forget — yet carries, in its very essence, the African soul.
Crimson Memories is therefore an act of reverence — a gesture of listening and visibility. It allows faces to speak, words to touch, and memories — even wounded ones — to bloom. Each photograph is a territory of identity; each memory, an act of permanence.
In African tradition, bodies are marked, tattooed, painted. The body is its own terreiro — sacred ground, a reservoir of knowledge. Ritualizing these marks cloaks the body in enchantment, transforming it into a living vessel of ancestral wisdom. Enchanted, vibrant terreiro-bodies lead us to the crossroads of African culture during the transatlantic passage — a place of pain, yes, but also of creation, resistance, and living memory.
In practice, the project takes shape through photographs of Black women draped in cloths and mantles, with faces painted according to African traditions. Over neutral clothing, they are adorned with fabrics that are not mere ornaments but mantles of memory — living fragments of a heritage that survived the passage, the imposed silence, and attempts at erasure. Each color enveloping these bodies symbolizes the African diaspora in Brazil, reconnecting millenary histories that still resonate. These women are not simply dressed — they are enrobed in meaning, strength, and spirituality, embodying ancestral voices: mothers, warriors, initiates, wise women of silence.
On the skin, the paintings are not decoration but language. Graphic elements treat the body as sacred territory, as altar and drum. They evoke rituals, myths, and divinities, tracing bridges between Africa and Brazil, between yesterday and today.