/18 Family

Ludmila Steckelberg

The Absence of All Colors

I been working mostly in erasing people from photos and keeping them just for me, in this little jewelry box that is called memory. I use various techniques as computer interferences, seam and needlework.

My career started in 2005, in Brazil, when I was doing my BA in design. I happen to cross the way of some marvelous individuals that would influence the rest of my life. They gave me the first taste of contemporary art; they taught me and inspired me. Back in those days, in a free period between the ending of university and a working period in design, I created the series The Absence of All Colors, where I would scan and interfere in pictures from my family with the help of my computer.

In this series, the contact with the person’s image, by the “cutting” process, makes me get in touch with details of them, people that sometimes I knew and sometimes I don’t. That creates an intimate connection with the person, transforming the process in an experience extremely intense and emotional.

My work talks about disappearance, rupture, emptiness, and how we deal, or not, with this common facts of life. It talks also about the questions of power related to relationships. Another matter is the use of photography as a palpable mean to reach memory and remembrance, and how people, and even I, deal with these objects that only accumulate significance with time.

I’m a Brazilian artist, based in Montreal, Canada. I made exhibitions in Brazil, Lithuania, Canada and Germany. I won prizes and my work figures in private and institutional collections like the one from the Museum of Modern Art from Rio de Janeiro.

ludmilaberg.see.me