Lívia Sá

Lívia Sá is an experimental analogue photographer and filmmaker who has participated in screenings and exhibited all over the world in countries such as Brazil, Chile, the United States, Japan, Mexico, Germany, and Italy. Her recent exhibitions include Muestra de Videodanza y Cine Experimental in Colima, Mexico, All Street Gallery and CultureHub in New York, Analog Art Festival and Collective Hug in São Paulo, Brazil. She has won awards with International Super 8mm Film Festival and The New School in New York.

The experimental analogue photography and films range from being sociological and literary to documentative and to abstraction. Lívia Sá shoots with Super 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, and medium format 120 film with a variety of techniques, such as multiple exposures, creations of photograms, montages, and recycling of residual film, which eventually transforms into aquatic particles. Her photographs either document her travels within Brazil and abroad or can even serve as sociological and political letters (postcards), incorporating texts with the photography to accentuate frustrations; such as excessive Covid-19 deaths in Brazil during the pandemic. The subtle granular texture of her analogue photography becomes accentuated with her expressive processing techniques and creative montages which often include composite development. Such a raw and labor-intensive practice creates photographs and films with rich textural and atmospheric tension, creating a thoroughly eloquent quality. 

With a sense of motion and life-force, these integrative, interdisciplinary, and antiquated techniques leave subjects experiencing vigorous energy and suspended animation. Lívia Sá’s expressive yet documentative nature takes her on a journey from capturing nudes in the mountains and rainforests to conveying colonial impact and subsequent reaction by indigenous protests. These are ultimately works which express a concern for the fragility of life. Such evocations are evident in film and photographic works which depict migrant workers in struggle and turmoil or self-portraits capturing a state of decline. Lívia Sá’s abstract analogue photography and films are sometimes about pure expression while other instances conveying conceptual notions on subjects such as bodily autonomy and menstruation. Such topics become communicated through blood-like smears and out of focus particles which may seem similar to pixelated distortions. However, these contortions are granular rather than square-like, creating a thoroughly experimental and meaningful effect. 

Alamo Photograms Negatives (pictured above) exemplifies Lívia Sá’s fascination of using process as means of expression. Like a rupture in time and space, these moments capturing a performance by Sofia Scharff in rural Brazil are conveyed in a multitude of ways through both film and photography. This particular photograph montage expresses the complexity in singular moments can have when interpreted by an analytical artist. 

Multi-dimensional and provocative, the works of Lívia Sá offer social commentary and personal expression on the impact and fragility of life. Whether through political and sociological protest or the frustrations with lack of autonomy, the artist uses the analogue process as a complex method to communicate both conceptually and expressively. Lívia Sá is a thoroughly dynamic photographer and filmmaker who advances intent-driven purpose to the lens-based arts. From vivid distortion to granular, sfumato-shadowed detail, she fully utilizes the analogue process, both in black & white and color, to convey a sense of depth and quality of interpretation.

https://liviasa.com/experimental