vilanovathais@gmail.com

From July to September 2024, FASA - Festival of Arts and Water Knowledge celebrated the cultural, social value, and customs surrounding this vital element in six municipalities of São Paulo, representing the state's diverse hydrographic regions, including Ilhabela.

In the magnificent Teatro de Vermelhos, set amidst the Atlantic Forest, FASA presented performances by renowned national musicians and local artists, as well as talks and guided tours with personalities committed to environmental issues related to the waters of each territory.

Regional artists held a prominent position at the festival, shining a spotlight on the cultural production of each visited territory, bringing to the public local artistic works that establish connections with the universe of water.

The photography exhibition by Maristela Colucci can be viewed at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjjOypPWtlo&t=355s

The exhibition VILLA BELLA - Iconographic memory of a beautiful island (Ilhabela 1900–1980) arrives at one of the most important cultural spaces in São Paulo: MIS – Museum of Image and Sound.

The project was awarded in the Programa de Ação Cultural – ProAC – of Secretaria da Cultura, Economia e Indústria Criativas of the Government of the State of São Paulo. After its debut in the city of São Paulo, the exhibition will also be presented at the Municipal Theater of Ubatuba, from May 17th to June 8th, and then will move to Caraguatatuba, where it can be seen at the Museum of Art and Culture (MACC), from June 20th to July 20th.

Organized by photographer Maristela Colucci, the exhibition features 69 images portraying moments from the past, deeply ingrained in the culture and daily life of Ilhabela's residents, notably highlighting the shift from Villa Bella to Ilhabela.

The iconographic material covers records between 1900 and 1980, a period that coincides with the evolution of photography and the consolidation of a multiple and complex culture within the archipelago. From the 1990s, while we witnessed the beginning of a major change in the capture and sharing of photographs, we also saw mass tourism intensify and interfere with local habits, altering environments, geography, and the traditional caiçara way of life.

The exhibition is the result of in-depth research into this cultural plurality. During the process, Maristela Colucci came across private collections of caiçara families and the first immigrants and vacationers. Throughout the research and conception journey of the exhibition, various photographs on paper – whose negatives were lost – were found, stored in boxes, albums, and, a few, framed. In the case of slides, preservation was not ideal and the images showed signs of handling and fungus. The biggest surprise was finding daguerreotypes from the 1920s and 1930s.

The images are available for research and online access on the project's Instagram:

 @ilhabela_1900_1980_villa_bella

The unpublished series "It can only be a joke" is selected for the collective projection "Dialogues of the Earth" at the 13th Tiradentes Photo Festival.

A crossing in time

For the past 10 years, I’ve dreamed of gathering old photographs of Ilhabela that I knew were preserved as treasures with no known maps. Recently I’ve been groping about until the paths lead me to some of the guardians of these gems; people aged 60, 80 and even 96 who have generously opened their homes, their albums, their boxes, their lives.

Wrapped in their memories, we revisited the plantations in full activity, crossed the channel in canoes by paddle and by “cloth” sail, watched the trade with Santos flourish and then dwindle.

We boarded legendary canoes that transported from goods to newlyweds, guests and even dead people. We woke up in the middle of the night enchanted by the Reis revelers at our doors and windows.

And sailed in São Pedro’s processions, and watched the Congada and got so involved that we even heard the sound of the marimba.

We went here and there on foot and by bicycle, getting off balance in the sometimes sandy stretches of trails between beaches.

We walked many kilometers to get to school everyday. Dropped picaré fishing trawl with the adults. We heard the sound of berrante, the horn, calling them to the sea as the mullet came in.

Young, we got together with friends on the Vila’s pier to play, sing and sometimes dance. Our daily life even ended up on movie screens when, shortly before 1950, the film Caiçara, the first production of Vera Cruz Film Company, was shooted here.

Gradually, we received the first immigrants and also the first vacationers. We saw architecture changing in the face of new demands. We witnessed the arrival of the first automobile on the island and many others when the ferry boat started operating – by then we were knocking on the doors of the 1960s.

Finally, we advanced through the 1970s and continued enjoying Carnival and dyeing with our crepe paper costumes the waters of the channel at the end of Dorothea’s Bath.

So many memories and emotions led us to this journey that the photographs here reveal. They, which have the magical power to cross time, mixing past and future.

All testimonies showed a common point: the love for Ilhabela.

It is this loving gaze that we have launched at Villa Bella/Formosa/Villa Bella da Princesa/Ilhabela since the beginning of the last century, and we come to current times with a certain nostalgia and the confessed wish of having really lived those simple and free times.

We continue our journey, now loaded with a wider vision and new feelings which give us a better understanding of current days and fight for a present and future worthy of this land and its inhabitants, from the original ones to those who one day made this crossing guided by the heart.

Maristela Colucci

The exhibition takes place between Dec 2021 and Feb 2022 at the Ilhabela Art and Culture Foundation (Fundaci), through the Aldir Blanc Law and financed by the Municipal Culture Fund of Ilhabela.

@ilhabela_1900_1980_villa_bella