Postcards to Fox Point

Series of postcards made with color paper cuts. 

As the majority of humans on Earth, I started the quarantine period in mid-March, in Brazil. Due to the pandemic complications, I was not able to get a visa and even if I had one I wouldn’t be able to enter the US, departing from my country, because of border restrictions. This project was made while I was a remote student in my first semester at RISD.

One of the first projects at RISD Grad School is Atlas, a topic intimately related to the idea of space, place, geography, territory. After researching the history and geography of Fox Point, the area I was assigned to, being in a remote position inevitably lead me into thinking about the real meaning of PLACE.

As in: what does it mean to be somewhere? How places are created? How to make yourself present when not physically in a space?

As an internet-space-time-traveler, I made a six postcards, using assembled small pieces of colored paper cuts, each representing a remarkable feature of the neighborhood — a souvenir of a trip that I didn’t really make. They became symbols of both a research and memory. I was never in Fox Point, though I could say I was.

Project developed in Graduate Studio I, taught by Bethany Johns and John Caserta in October 2020.