Maíra das Neve

In 4 days, part of the Temporagram series (2024–2025), Maíra das Neves reinterprets the Spanish tradition of the bodegón, particularly the stark still lifes of Juan Sánchez Cotán, by introducing bananas as central motifs. This subtle substitution reconfigures the geopolitics of food in the still-life genre, transforming a classical European format into a meditation on the histories of migration, colonial trade, and cultural hybridity linked to the banana. Executed as a gelatin silver print, the work employs double exposure to layer different temporal moments within a single image, creating a visual palimpsest where the past and present collapse into one.

The four-day interval between exposures produces a striking meditation on impermanence. Instead of the skull or extinguished candle often found in traditional still lifes to symbolize transience, das Neves uses the gradual transformation of the banana as a temporal marker. This process reflects alternative, non-linear conceptions of time drawn from Amerindian and Afro-Brazilian cosmologies, where temporality unfolds not as a linear progression but as a spiral in which past, present, and future coexist. By foregrounding the fruit’s visible decay, 4 days points to cycles of consumption, memory, and disappearance while reimagining the photographic medium itself as a device for making time perceptible.