ALICE MARCELINO

Alice Marcelino is a London based photographer.
Born in Luanda, Angola, Alice moved to Portugal at a very early age, where she grew up and lived most of her life. She experienced and explored various art forms, from dance to theatre, until discovering and adopting photography as her main form of expression. Her images reflect her special interest in individual stories exploring concepts of identity and sub-cultures, and their meaning in our globalised world. 

PD: Please describe yourself, your practice and aspiration?

AM: I am a Portuguese-Angolan photographer based in London and I have graduated in Photography at the University of East London. I have been developing work in the form of portrait and documentary projects with a focus on social issues within a postcolonial context, like representation, migration, traditions and my aim is to understand and reflect on its repercussions on an individual level.

PD: The idea of home for many people means the place where the heart belongs, does that notion of home has any link with childhood to you? Please guide us to the place that you call home?

AM: I have never lived more than 10 years in the same place, so the idea of home as a physical place simply doesn’t work for me. I was born in Luanda, a home I can barely remember; only the photographs validate domestic routines of a place that it is unfamiliar to me. I grew up in Portugal, the country that shaped me as a person, and the place to which I return whenever I can, knowing it will never be the same as before.

Home is now. Home is in Brixton, with my partner and my dog, my neighbours and friends. Home is when I visit my parents and friends that live in Lisbon or wherever they are based. Home is in every single person, which have embraced me and loved me for who I am.

PD: Who are your domestic legends? Please describe the relationship that you can recall with it.

AM: The ladies make the bulk of my domestic legends. I always admired my grandmother energy, determination, endurance and her cooking. She used to grow her own garden and had everything you would need to feed yourself. Everything I know about food is because of her. But my mother is by far the legend. Even though she was not present throughout my life, I have a most profound admiration for everything she went through. Always smiling, always dancing. Forever positive.

PD: Your practice encompasses photography and video. Please elaborate on what role they play on your process and your approach with each one?

AM: I work mostly with photography and very recently I started to explore and enjoy more doing installations by combining photos with video and audio. It is all very experimental at the moment but the idea is to immerse the viewer in the story and also to try on new narratives, new ways of telling important stories.

PD: Please take us through to your creative process and how different places may affect or influence your work?

AM: My projects start by having conversations with people. I want to know their opinions on how certain situations or events influence the way they see themselves and their surroundings. For Kindumba my research was made in the streets and hairdressers in Brixton, through conversations with friends and family. I also research the media to understand how misrepresentation affects people’s identities and self-esteem. So in the end, I chose to shoot on studio because I wanted to isolate that particular characteristic and focus mainly on the hair, like the mirror in front of us in the hairdresser. We can’t run from it, so it is a symbol of endurance and defiance and most of all beautiful. On the other hand, Love to remember has a documentary approach. I am documenting the rituals surrounding the death of the African Caribbean communities in the south of London. The physical space is not only the place of action; it also has an emotional meaning with the past, present and future. The funerals celebrate some of the lives of the last members of the Windrush generation. A generation that has built England after the second world war with their descendants now being questioned about their nationality and their right to live in England.

PD: Using your past, present or on-going projects as examples, please tell us more about the themes you are dealing with, your interests and how it gives emphasis to your work?

AM: One of the topics that are present on my projects is the experience of being black or mixed race in the western world. The concept of belonging is very present in my work. With Kindumba I was interested in deconstructing stereotypes, to reflect and understand the reasons they exist in the first place. Black features in western society have been vilified and abashed in TV, cinema, advertising, pop culture etc dehumanising furthermore black and people of colour. Imagine that millions in the global south bleach their skin hoping to ascend out of poverty into a world with more opportunities. Or the millions of women that use chemicals to straighten their hair so they can be seen as professionals in their workplaces. Meanwhile, the industry of hair and skin bleach grows by the billions every year with only a small percentage of that capital belonging to black businesses. How did we get here? We are trying to conceal what is intrinsic in us in order to blend, handing over the control and dignity of our own bodies.

I felt the need to create a conversation about such anxieties by presenting an alternative narrative that challenges those stereotypes and empowers the individual. The project I am currently developing explores the lack of positive visual representations of black and brown bodies in positions of decision-making in Portugal. My interest is to understand how race has played an important role to limit the physical spaces that black and coloured people are allowed to exist.

PD: What are the iconography has the most significant meaning to you and has influenced directly or indirectly you practice? Please share it with us?

AM: I have a lot but I give you 3.
Hairstyles and Headdresses from J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere influenced directly my work In kindumba. His project celebrating hair and enlightening about the different meanings of each hairstyle inspired me to pursue that same celebration even on a personal level.

Yinka Shonibare and his use of mix media to explore issues around race, cultural identity and post-colonialism. His last exhibition British Library contains 6000 books with some of them having the names of the first and second generation of immigrants to Britain, printed on their spines. It is another praise to the Windrush generation and their contribution to British culture and history.

Cristina de Middel projects reflect some of the questions I have in relation to photography and the limits surrounding it. As a former photojournalist, she also questions the use of the documentary format as an effective tool to address and create a reaction on the viewer towards social, environmental and economic issues. Her approach to questioning the truth inherent in photography is very interesting and I am very curious how this can lead to new narratives.

More about Alice.

BY JANUARIO JANO, 2019 © PD