EX-VOTOS
Votive offerings are objects offered in a sacred place, in thanksgiving or in fulfillment of a vow. Near the church of Nossa Senhora da Penha, in the Paraíba region of Brazil, anonymous individuals deposit these intimate testimonies of faith, hope, and loss. Among the piles are models of houses—dream houses, lost houses—as well as fragments of bodies made of wax or wood, prosthetics, and objects damaged by life.
In this series of four photographic prints, artist Romane Iskaria captures this silent accumulation, both precious and precarious. Through these votive objects, a social and collective memory is revealed—that of a deeply religious people, for whom home is not only a shelter but a symbol of stability, identity, and survival.
In a Brazil wracked by inequality and home evictions, these offerings also speak of uprooting, dispossession, and the fragility of the connection to land and home. The objects pile up to the point of merging, of disappearing. Yet their trace remains, telling, implicitly, the unique stories of those who crossed this sacred threshold. This sanctuary thus becomes a place of memory, resistance, and symbolic reparation.
Silver photographs, North-Este region, Brazil
2017 - 2019
