OS ENCANTADOS
Os Encantados – The Enchanted Ones is a documentary inquiry by artist and photographer Romane Iskaria, bringing together photography, documentary film, archival materials, and narratives drawn from field research. Developed as a long-term project, the work emerged from an immersion in Northeastern Brazil, within communities whose spiritual, botanical, and territorial knowledge remains deeply threatened yet profoundly alive.
The project originates in the quilombola communities of Ipiranga, in Conde, before expanding into a broader investigation of Jurema Sagrada, a spiritual tradition rooted in Indigenous matrices and shaped by Afro-Brazilian heritages. Through an approach grounded in long-term engagement, listening, and relational practice, Romane Iskaria explores the connections between memory, spirituality, territory, and transmission.
At the center of this research lies Jurema, a sacred plant (Mimosa hostilis Benth) used in ritual practices and associated with the Encantados, spiritual entities present within Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cosmologies. Jurema embodies a living memory of the land, a link between visible and invisible worlds, but also a form of resistance against historical, cultural, and environmental erasure.
Many Mestres and Mestras of Jurema also perpetuate healing practices rooted in sacred plants and vernacular knowledge systems. This dimension has led to the development of several photographic series and lines of inquiry focused on gestures of healing, oral transmission, and the relationships between body, nature, and spirituality.
Through portraits, landscapes, objects, plants, and ritual traces, Os Encantados constructs a sensitive cartography of territories inhabited by invisible presences, surviving memories, and contemporary forms of resistance. The project questions what becomes of these cosmologies as territories transform, knowledge holders disappear, and the balance between humans, spirituality, and the environment grows increasingly fragile.
Situated between documentary practice and intuitive perception, Os Encantados seeks to make visible worlds often marginalized within dominant narratives of Brazilian identity. The project pays tribute to those who protect, transmit, and reinvent these living heritages, deeply rooted both in the land and in the invisible.
Paraíba Northeast Brasil. Ongoing project.
The project originates in the quilombola communities of Ipiranga, in Conde, before expanding into a broader investigation of Jurema Sagrada, a spiritual tradition rooted in Indigenous matrices and shaped by Afro-Brazilian heritages. Through an approach grounded in long-term engagement, listening, and relational practice, Romane Iskaria explores the connections between memory, spirituality, territory, and transmission.
At the center of this research lies Jurema, a sacred plant (Mimosa hostilis Benth) used in ritual practices and associated with the Encantados, spiritual entities present within Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cosmologies. Jurema embodies a living memory of the land, a link between visible and invisible worlds, but also a form of resistance against historical, cultural, and environmental erasure.
Many Mestres and Mestras of Jurema also perpetuate healing practices rooted in sacred plants and vernacular knowledge systems. This dimension has led to the development of several photographic series and lines of inquiry focused on gestures of healing, oral transmission, and the relationships between body, nature, and spirituality.
Through portraits, landscapes, objects, plants, and ritual traces, Os Encantados constructs a sensitive cartography of territories inhabited by invisible presences, surviving memories, and contemporary forms of resistance. The project questions what becomes of these cosmologies as territories transform, knowledge holders disappear, and the balance between humans, spirituality, and the environment grows increasingly fragile.
Situated between documentary practice and intuitive perception, Os Encantados seeks to make visible worlds often marginalized within dominant narratives of Brazilian identity. The project pays tribute to those who protect, transmit, and reinvent these living heritages, deeply rooted both in the land and in the invisible.
Paraíba Northeast Brasil. Ongoing project.
2026 Sensitive Atlas: Topography of a Living Territory, Torre Malakoff, Recife, Paraíba, Brazil.
With French Consulat of France in Brazil.
2026 Sensitive Atlas: Topography of a Living Territory, Estaçāo Cabo Branco, João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil
2024 TIFF. Emerging Belgian Photography, Cultural Flemish Center BrakkeGrond, Amsterdam NE
2024 TIFF. Emerging Belgian Photography, FOMU (Museum of Photography) Antwerp BE
Solo exhibition “Atlas Sensível - Topografia de um Territorio Vivo” exhibition in Estaçāo Cabo Branco in Paraíba Brazil.
Within the framework of the solo exhibition Atlas Sensível, the project unfolds as an immersive installation offering a journey between documentary, storytelling and sensory experience. The exhibition includes a 45 minute documentary film, presented within an installation inspired by the public televisions found in Brazilian town squares in the 1980s, creating a collective space for listening and shared experience. It also brings together more than fifty photographs, experimental cotton paper prints and a series of works installed throughout the space in various forms.
2026 Sensitive Atlas: Topography of a Living Territory, Estaçāo Cabo Branco, João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil
2024 TIFF. Emerging Belgian Photography, Cultural Flemish Center BrakkeGrond, Amsterdam NE
2024 TIFF. Emerging Belgian Photography, FOMU (Museum of Photography) Antwerp BE
Solo exhibition “Atlas Sensível - Topografia de um Territorio Vivo” exhibition in Estaçāo Cabo Branco in Paraíba Brazil.
Within the framework of the solo exhibition Atlas Sensível, the project unfolds as an immersive installation offering a journey between documentary, storytelling and sensory experience. The exhibition includes a 45 minute documentary film, presented within an installation inspired by the public televisions found in Brazilian town squares in the 1980s, creating a collective space for listening and shared experience. It also brings together more than fifty photographs, experimental cotton paper prints and a series of works installed throughout the space in various forms.
Exhibition view Atlas Sensível : Topografia de um território vivo, installation of photography, Estação Cabo Branco, Paraíba (BR), 2026. 
Exhibition view Atlas Sensível : Topografia de um território vivo, installation of photography, Estação Cabo Branco, Paraíba (BR), 2026.
Exhibition view Atlas Sensível : Topografia de um território vivo, installation of photography, Estação Cabo Branco, Paraíba (BR), 2026. 
Exhibition view Atlas Sensível : Topografia de um território vivo, installation of photography, Estação Cabo Branco, Paraíba (BR), 2026. 
Exhibition view Atlas Sensível, photography 30x30 cm,
Estação Cabo Branco, Paraíba (BR), 2026.
Exhibition view Atlas Sensível : Topografia de um território vivo, installation of photography and drawings, 11x15 cm, Estação Cabo Branco, Paraíba (BR), 2026. 
Exhibition view Atlas Sensível : Topografia de um território vivo, installation of photography and drawings, 11x15 cm, Estação Cabo Branco, Paraíba (BR), 2026. 
Exhibition view Atlas Sensível : Topografia de um território vivo, installation of photography and drawings, 11x15 cm, Estação Cabo Branco, Paraíba (BR), 2026. 
Exhibition view Atlas Sensível : Topografia de um território vivo, installation of photography and drawings, 11x15 cm, Estação Cabo Branco, Paraíba (BR), 2026. Chapter I : Os Encantados : Territory of Quilombos.
Romane Iskaria, Photographer Artist & Researcher
Osvaldo Falcāo, brazilian Historian & Doctoral Researcher in Social Anthropology
Mestra Ana and the Museum of Quilombo Ipiranga
This photographic series emerges from a long-term research project developed in quilombo territories and around the Sacred Jurema in Northeast Brazil. Created through encounters with Mestras, healers, and communities in the state of Paraíba, the work explores the relationships between spirituality, territory, healing practices, and memory.
Rather than documenting these worlds through a linear or ethnographic perspective, the series approaches photography as a space of fragments, traces, and sensitive presences. Plants, landscapes, gestures, ritual objects, and textures appear as carriers of ancestral knowledge and living memory. The images don’t seek to explain or categorize, but to evoke the invisible layers that inhabit these territories and continue to shape Afro-Indigenous cosmologies in contemporary Brazil.
At the center of the work is the Sacred Jurema, a spiritual tradition rooted in Indigenous knowledge and transformed through Afro-Brazilian histories and practices of resistance. Jurema is both a sacred plant and a cosmology, deeply connected to healing rituals, oral transmission, and relationships between human and non-human worlds.
The photographic series gave rise to several exhibitions combining images, archival elements, plant materials, sound, and spatial installations. Conceived as immersive environments, these exhibitions extend the research beyond the photographic image, creating spaces where memory, spirituality, and material presence interact. Through constellations of photographs and objects, the installations invite viewers to experience the continuity between landscape, body, ritual, and ancestral knowledge.
By bringing together photography and installation, the project reflects on how images can hold traces of disappearance, resistance, and transmission. The exhibitions become spaces for listening and encounter, paying tribute to the communities and women who continue to preserve these living heritages despite ongoing social, cultural, and environmental transformations.
Rather than documenting these worlds through a linear or ethnographic perspective, the series approaches photography as a space of fragments, traces, and sensitive presences. Plants, landscapes, gestures, ritual objects, and textures appear as carriers of ancestral knowledge and living memory. The images don’t seek to explain or categorize, but to evoke the invisible layers that inhabit these territories and continue to shape Afro-Indigenous cosmologies in contemporary Brazil.
At the center of the work is the Sacred Jurema, a spiritual tradition rooted in Indigenous knowledge and transformed through Afro-Brazilian histories and practices of resistance. Jurema is both a sacred plant and a cosmology, deeply connected to healing rituals, oral transmission, and relationships between human and non-human worlds.
The photographic series gave rise to several exhibitions combining images, archival elements, plant materials, sound, and spatial installations. Conceived as immersive environments, these exhibitions extend the research beyond the photographic image, creating spaces where memory, spirituality, and material presence interact. Through constellations of photographs and objects, the installations invite viewers to experience the continuity between landscape, body, ritual, and ancestral knowledge.
By bringing together photography and installation, the project reflects on how images can hold traces of disappearance, resistance, and transmission. The exhibitions become spaces for listening and encounter, paying tribute to the communities and women who continue to preserve these living heritages despite ongoing social, cultural, and environmental transformations.
2025 Solo show, Brazilian Embassy in Brussels, Os Encantados, text by PhD student Osvaldo Falcão, BE
2025 Solo show, Uzina Energisa Institute, Art Gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL
Text by PhD student in anthropology Osvaldo Falcão. Curator Serge Huot.
Exhibition “Os Encantados” exhibition in Uzina Energisa, art Gallery in Paraíba Brazil. Collaboration with brazilian PhD in history Osvaldo Falcāo.
2025 Solo show, Uzina Energisa Institute, Art Gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL
Text by PhD student in anthropology Osvaldo Falcão. Curator Serge Huot.
Exhibition “Os Encantados” exhibition in Uzina Energisa, art Gallery in Paraíba Brazil. Collaboration with brazilian PhD in history Osvaldo Falcāo.
Exhibition view Os Encantados,Uzina Energisa Institute, art gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL 2025.
Exhibition view : collage Os Encantados.
Dimension : 9mx2m.
Materials : photography, archives, texts, earth of Paraíba.
Uzina Energisa Institute, art gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL 2025.
Exhibition view close-up : collage Os Encantados, Uzina Energisa Institute, art gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL 2025.
Exhibition view close-up : collage Os Encantados, Uzina Energisa Institute, art gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL 2025.
Exhibition view The story of Tambaba Assentamento, video installation, Plush art gallery, Brussels (BELGIUM) 2025
Exhibition view Os Encantados,Uzina Energisa Institute, art gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL 2025.
Exhibition view Os Encantados,Uzina Energisa Institute, art gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL 2025.
Exhibition view Os Encantados, self-portrait, Uzina Energisa Institute, art gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL 2025.
Exhibition view Os Encantados, research table, Uzina Energisa Institute, art gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL 2025.
Exhibition view, Os Encantados, video textile installation, Uzina Energisa Institute, art gallery, João Pessoa, Paraiba, Northeast BRAZIL 2025.
Exhibition view Os Encantados, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, FOMU Antwerp (BE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, FOMU Antwerp (BE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados video installation, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, FOMU Antwerp (BE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, FOMU Antwerp (BE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados, video installation, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, FOMU Antwerp (BE) 2024-
Exhibition view Os Encantados, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, BRAKKE-GROND, Cultural Flemish Center, Amsterdam (NE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, BRAKKE-GROND, Cultural Flemish Center, Amsterdam (NE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, BRAKKE-GROND, Cultural Flemish Center, Amsterdam (NE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, BRAKKE-GROND, Cultural Flemish Center, Amsterdam (NE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, BRAKKE-GROND, Cultural Flemish Center, Amsterdam (NE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, BRAKKE-GROND, Cultural Flemish Center, Amsterdam (NE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, BRAKKE-GROND, Cultural Flemish Center, Amsterdam (NE) 2024
Exhibition view Os Encantados video installation, .TIFF 2024 Emerging Belgian Photography, BRAKKE-GROND, Cultural Flemish Center, Amsterdam (NE) 2024
Article in the newspaper A UNIAO Brazil from the series Os Encantados by Romane Iskaria 2025
Article in the newspaper A UNIAO Brazil from the series Os Encantados by Romane Iskaria 2024
