Ilana Bar

Transparências de lar

One of Ilana Bar’s best-known works is the series Transparências de lar (Home Transparencies) in which, for four years, the artist photographed her family’s rural home in Atibaia where her father lives with his two brothers and Ilana’s own brother, all three with Down Syndrome. Transparências de lar is the record of a serene, though certainly not a perfect, place. In this place Down Syndrome is not considered an alienable difference in the way that it is in Western culture, it is not problematic or a cause for social exclusion. 

On the contrary, each of Bar’s subjects’ personality and worldview are portrayed with both normality and appreciation for their individuality. The series looks at the rhythm of human life combining the everyday with the imaginary. The artist sometimes directs her uncles and brother, who pose or act for her, forming a mosaic of suspended affections that present a reflection on the passing of time, beauty, similarity, difference, and love.