Project by: Luiza Heleno
Drawn from the personal archive of my family, this project includes a domestic collection of wearable objects organized within the physical framework of a dresser. This collection will include jewelry made from materials, such as Capim Dourado and Açaí seeds, that originate from Brazil but were brought to the United States. Rather than looking at these objects as static, this archive aims to document the full life of the pieces from their material and economic histories to their place in my family’s history. Through a system of classification that defines material origins, their relation to bodies, and economic states, this archive prioritizes documenting how these objects live between relationships of labor and migration. This project argues that not only are archives capable of acting as sites of preservation, but they are systems that can produce knowledge of these diasporic identities.
