Ana Vaz

Who is Ana Vaz?

Ana Vaz is a visual artist and experimental filmmaker. Born in Brasília in 1986, her upbringing in the Brazilian capital had a formative impact on the conceptual framework of her art. She graduated from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Australia and Le Fresnoy in France, and she received a Master's degree in Political Science at SPEAP, a project directed by the French thinker Bruno Latour. She currently lives and works in Brasília.

Towards a decolonized art

Vaz's upbringing in Brasília – a modern city which was built from scratch as the new capital of Brazil – was instrumental in the formation of her artistic practice, providing the key elements that make her cinematic language distinctive. Vaz approaches issues which are tightly bound to the history and territory of her native country, assembling ethnographic material which critically assesses the relationship between colonialism, modernity and looming ecological disaster. Having spent part of her life on the cerrado of Central Brazil and the arid brush of Southern Australia, Vaz juxtaposes the pristine beauty of these natural topoi with the nihilistic decimation manifested in the modern urban fabric.

Her cinematic vision is distinguished by how she unsettles the hierarchical gaze of ethnographic filmmaking, thereby accentuating both the inconstancy of perspectives and the presences before and behind the film camera. Structured as film-poems, her works are characterized by their complex layers in which she speculates on the relationships between myth and history. In her hands film also acquires a more distinctly corporeal aspect, capable of rejuvenating and reimagining the image.

Vaz' standing in the world of contemporary art

When Vaz debuted in 2007 with her first experimental film Sacris Pulso while still a student at the RMIT, she set the foundation for a career where her works featured in internationally acclaimed museums, galleries, seminars and film festivals. Her films have been screened at Tate Modern in London, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Jeu de Paume in Paris, New York Film Festival, TIFF Wavelengths in Toronto, Cinéma du Réel in Paris, and many other places.

Some of her representative solo exhibitions were held at Jeu de Paume, Pivô, Escola das Artes in Porto, LUX in London, and Matadero in Madrid. Her films and video installations have also been presented as part of group exhibitions at the 24th Prix de la Fondation Pernod Ricard, CRAC Alsace, Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao, Complesso dell’Ospedaletto in Venice, Thessaloniki Biennial and SESC Belenzinho in São Paulo.

Awards and recognitions

Vaz first achieved prominence with her short film Sacris Pulso, a biographical film that incorporates elements of the experimental film Brasiliários. Since her debut in 2007, Vaz has received awards and prizes for her films and video installations: she was nominated for the PIPA Prize in 2017 and 2022; she received the Kazuko Trust Award (2015); and she won prizes at Media City Film Festival (2015), Punto de Vista (2020) and 25FPS (2020). She was awarded the Robert E. Fulton III Fellowship in Nonfiction Filmmaking by Harvard University for 2023-2024 for outstanding contributions to moving image art, which was accompanied by a retrospective held at Harvard Film Archive.

Ongoing projects

Vaz is one of the founding members of COYOTE, an artist collective that engages in interdisciplinary research into ecological and political topics through an array of conceptual and experiential forms.

She is currently working on a residency project at Villa Medici writing the script for ANHNANGUERA, a trans(e)historical fiction that derives its material from the history of colonization in Brazil's Far West.

More information

Additional materials on Vaz can be found through her Instagram and Vimeo accounts.