Ana Paula dos Santos
05.09.2025 - 18.10.2025
Abertura
Sakhile&Me
Ana Paula dos Santos is a photographer whose artistic practice is shaped both by her youth in Brazil and by her studies in human geography and “decolonial studies,” which provided her with a language to articulate her experiences from her childhood and youth in Brazil and to grasp and understand those experiences within a broader context. Dos Santos’ understanding of colonialism has also fostered a sense of self-confidence: as a Brazilian living in Germany, she seeks to challenge stereotypes of the “exotic object” in her work—an object viewed as a spectacle from a distant land and through a colonial lens. The artist emphasizes: “I do not want to show a Brazil that beautifies itself for the colonizers, that has to beautify itself and conceal its mistakes in order to be treated graciously, but I want to show a Brazil as I see it with my own eyes.”
Through her love of old and alternative cameras and her engagement with them, dos Santos has also observed that Exhibitions rarely presents analog photography as a practice of Black women photographers. This led the artist to ask whether the spirit of colonialism can also be sensed in this pattern, which is closely linked to the history of photography. “The fact that I, as an Afro-Brazilian woman, use this instrument to photograph Terra Nova—the exotic land—with this apparatus of the colonizers, but not with the colonizers’ gaze, means making this perspective—this way of looking at things, this subjectivity—available and accessible, thereby inviting the viewer to confront and engage with their own gaze,” explains dos Santos. The artist’s photographic practice began ten years ago when she started experimenting with various cameras. She realized that our eyes, emotions, and life experiences play a major role in how we perceive the world around us, and that it is fascinating to see how our experiences and perceptions are conveyed through the camera.
In 2014, dos Santos graduated from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University in Frankfurt with a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology and Romance Studies (Latin American Studies). In 2019, she earned her Master of Arts in Human Geography from the same university, with a focus on “Decolonial Debates in Art.” In 2026, she completed her studies at the Städelschule with a Master of Arts. Dos Santos lives and works in Frankfurt.
Sakhile&Me
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