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3x4

Camila de Sousa

Mozambique

22 Jun 2012 – 30 Sep 2012

Jardim Gulbenkian

Free admission

"3x4" is the result of an immersion in two female prisons in Maputo, the Jail and the Center for Women's Imprisonment in Ndlhavela. In Mozambique, the exercise and respect for women’s rights, who are in a prison regime, constitute a major challenge: beyond the arbitrary acts committed by investigating authorities, the limits for detention, poor housing conditions, food and hygiene, there is a prevailing patriarchy that reinforces the unequal treatment given to women by the Mozambican justice. 

Over a year, the artist had the opportunity to socialize with women of different nationalities, ages and social classes, but whose stories and experiences are interconnected by episodes of physical and social separation, atonement and reconciliation. In the series presented, the images are trying to create a field of negotiation and political recovery of the fractured female body, which, though marked by the logic of patriarchal violence, nevertheless, however, being yet a female body, and master of its sensuality and of its own movement.

CAMILA DE SOUSA (Mozambique, 1985) is graduated in Social Sciences with a focus on Visual Anthropology. She has been improving her knowledge in areas such as photography and audiovisual and participating in several training courses in Mozambique, Brazil and Senegal. In 2010, she presented the Documentary and Short Film "Mafalala Blues" at the Franco Mozambican Cultural Center and at the Center for Studies Brazil-Mozambique under the Dockanema Documentary Film Festival. Also in 2010, the artist began the “3x4” project, a project on representations of the female body imprisoned. “3x4” was partially presented in 2011, in two exhibitions in Maputo - "Temporary Occupations" and "Masculinity and Violence."