Andrea Eichenberger was born in 1976 in Florianópolis, Brazil. After studying visual arts in Brazil, she did a PhD in visual anthropology, between Brazil and France. In 2013, she received the price Funarte Women in Visual Arts of Brazilian Ministry of Culture, in 2012, she was winner of the Prix UPP Découverte, in Paris, and in 2006, she was winner of the Best Photographic Narrative of Festival Fazendo Gênero 7, Brazil. Her work was exhibited in different places in Brazil, New Zealand, France and United States.
Translitorânea (the Transcoastal Road), or BR101 is the road that runs along the Brazilian coast from the north to the south, joining different states and regions for 4.542 km.
In this project, in which travel and photography are considered as the means of getting close to places and people, the road becomes a stage for a road trip marked by encounters and life stories that highlight the geographical, economic, social and cultural diversity of Brazil today.
”On the BR101, Andrea looks through the window of her parents’ car at the landscape passing by. The child dreams of a day when she will stop in the villages. Some years later, her photographic work entitled Translitorânea is a way of going back in time.
Through the sensitive and realistic vision of the artist, we discover people and places that are very different from touristy clichés. In the daily life of the highway, each person, each piece of space contains poetry, which the encounter is able to reveal. The places and the objects often seem abandoned: these still lives are metaphors for memory. Translitorânea is no longer a road, it has become an experience.
From hundreds of images taken during several months, Andrea has constructed Translitorânea as a utopia. The artist has invented a universe with characters, just as a novelist would. Everything comes from reality but is transformed by integrating the imagination of the artist. Women, couples, children, workers and the elderly make up a people. If we do not know this community, the artist, she, knows each person’s story – this intimacy of the encounter is found in the trust that the models give her.
The inhabitants of Translitorânea are kind and proud, they are neither rich nor poor. These people are equal. Translitorânea is an allegory for democracy”.
Michel Poivert, curator
