Babuíno Talismã, Daniela Ângelo’s solo exhibition at Galerias Municipais de Lisboa – Galeria da Boavista, gathers together several photos documenting the very essence of beings and artefacts found in archaeological and natural history museums. The artist dilutes the frontiers between natural and artificial, appealing to the mystical and poetic properties of the photographic image.

Daniela Ângelo equally captures animals and objects, erasing the boundaries between what belongs to nature and to humans. This dilution alludes to animist beliefs, where humans ascribe sentience to natural elements, animals, plants or objects. The exhibition’s title itself intertwines the natural and spiritual worlds. As an animal, the baboon is associated with talismans, objects where we assign protection, guidance or healing purposes. The image bearing the show’s title emerges from a double exhibition, with a baboon fused with a shamanic object, accentuating the attraction of crossing different universes.

On entering the first room of Babuíno Talismã, we are taken to a world where reality is subtly distorted. Each image is carefully framed, stripping the scene of any elements that might serve as a reference for the photographed object’s scale. This perspective control takes us into a realm where the boundaries between the foreign and the familiar vanish. Whatever we see, even if we try to acknowledge it, remains unreachable. You must surrender to the eeriness and subtlety of the image when you look at the mysterious white-feathered bird or the mesmerising red vase.

The presence of the colour black is shared by all of Daniela Ângelo’s images. The strong contrast of light and dark, together with the black background, removes objects and beings from their original context, emphasising their forms in an isolated and timeless way. Within these black backgrounds, the details become sharper, the lines more defined and each contour acquires a singular depth. This is a quality that defies the notion of time and space.

The endless black is heightened on the second floor, where the exhibition venue incorporates black walls and the light play sharpens with focal points directed only at the photos. The darkness maximises the images’ mystery and magic. In one room, there’s a photograph so dark that it almost becomes impossible to look at it. If one stares at the glass object appearing in the image, phosphenes break out, small coloured dots that emerge in the visual field when we are subjected to darkness.

The elements appearing in Daniela Ângelo’s photos are stripped of any context, their real significance lies in the shadows, overturning the museum’s original intention of putting them on display. These images challenge our expectations, inviting us to experience a place where the notion of labelling and meaning is dissolved – an aspect also emphasised by the fact that the works do not have any titles. The objects photographed are detached from the identifications to which they are necessarily subjected in museums. Unencumbered by names, they are part of an image constellation that may or may not be what they stand for. Everything we see becomes part of a speculative space where the viewer is actively invited to participate in building meanings.

When looking at Daniela Ângelo’s images, the issue of death is also brought into play, because, even though we are aware that the animals we are seeing are not alive, there is an unsettling sense of vitality in them. Ângelo’s lens endows them with a singular existence, as is the case with the owl that flies over us and looks on. 

Babuíno Talismã is a universe of shadows and contrasts awakening profound questions on the nature of life and death, reality and illusion. Daniela Ângelo creates a tense and unsettling atmosphere, where the burden of the images’ meaning falls on the viewer.

The exhibition, curated by Bernardo José de Souza, is on show at Galeria da Boavista until March 31, 2024.