Ana Raylander Mártis dos Anjos’s practice develops through long-term research-based projects. In the largescale installation A casa de Bené [Bené’s House] (2025), Raylander turns the research question inward, into herself and her nuclear family, “These are pieces left over from my great-grandfather’s house, all used or made by him: a piece of vine with a base; a lighter in the shape of a bullet; a bamboo basket; a gourd; a long and a short pau-mulato stick; and a small wooden box.”
Starting from a set of objects left over from the demolished wattle-and-daub house built by her great-grandfather Benedito Cândido, Raylander builds an installation that seeks to recognize her great-grandfather’s creative influence on her political and poetic construction. Raylander lays the foundations of Bené’s house inside the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, engaging the materials already recurrent in her practice – textile totemic columns sculptures composed of tied-up pieces of fabric made from natural fibres, woollen knits, cotton shirts, and leather straps – while incorporating new techniques and materials. The new elements include brass baskets, sculptures, and the objects left over from her great-grandfather’s house, continuing a quest to recover her family’s memory. Part of the ephemera in the installation includes a sketch of the floor plan of Bené’s house, mapped by Efigênia, the artist’s grandmother, further demonstrating Raylander’s commitment to exploring the possible reconstructions of personal histories.
Fragmented across the Pavilion’s three floors and arranged in a calculated/organic manner, the whole work explores familial structures as enduring institutions, looming large in both memory and form. Their significance is made precious through casting in bronze and the symbolic presence of columns – here, the columns represent Raylander’s great-grandfather’s nine children. The sets of metal baskets refer to the local context: the small town of Bela Vista de Minas (Minas Gerais), where the presence of mining is a daily occurrence and contrasts with vernacular and traditional practices, such as basketry. From these baskets come soft sculptures that wind throughout the space and serve as an umbilical cord that connects the entire installation. The seven original objects are arranged individually in some of the baskets, while the baskets that don’t contain these objects hold charcoal, stones, earth, ore, tobacco, and other organic materials that are part of the ecology and history of the territory and the family of Bela Vista de Minas. The totality of these elements intertwines to weave narratives of family history, place, nation, and belonging.
