The first part of Ana Vaz’s film-poem trilogy Meteoro: Paris, St Lazare (2023) is a meditation on present-day cities on the verge of collapse. Through a series of fleeting sound-images, Vaz captures the undercurrents that course beneath the staid image of contemporary Europe, illustrating, in relief, the long-standing ramifications of the colonial project, as well as its legacies of overconsumption and eventual entropic decline. Researcher and scholar Maïa Tellit Hawad discusses the ‘red wind’, a natural phenomenon that manifests as the return of dust from the French Army’s nuclear tests in the Algerian desert. The film also features the contribution of the artist’s longtime collaborator, author and curator Olivier Marboeuf with his fable ‘Déesse’ (Goddess), reflecting on present-day remnants of colonialism in France.
Shown in the context of widespread global anti-immigration discourse today, Vaz’s counter-ethnographic critique of Paris traces a line from contemporary urban life down to the roots of the colonial infrastructure that built Europe. Here, the video installation is accompanied by the publication Meteoro, Cometas (2024), which extends the fragmented poetics of this visceral study into print form.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Ana Vaz (b. 1986, Brasília) is an artist and filmmaker currently based in Paris. Her films question cinema as an art of the (in)visible and as an instrument capable of transforming human perception, expanding its connections with spectral or other-than-human forms of life. Solo exhibitions include Ana Vaz: Meteoro, Secession, Vienna (2025); O que aconteceu ainda está porvir (What happened is yet to come), Centro de Cinema Batalha, Porto, and Solar – Galeria de Arte Cinemática, Vila do Conde (2024); It is Night in America, Pivô, São Paulo (2022) and Jeu de Paume, Paris (2021). Group exhibitions include 12th SITE SANTA FE International (2025); Do you believe in ghosts?, 24th Prix de la Fondation Ricard, Paris (2023); Penumbra, Fondazione In Between Art Film, Complesso dell'Ospedaletto, Venice (2022).
EXHIBITED WORKS
Ana Vaz (b. 1986)
Meteoro: Paris, St Lazare, 2023
Single-channel video, 5:3, black and white, 23:45 min, 3.1 sound
Featuring Maïa Tellit Hawad, Olivier Marboeuf and David Terriat
Courtesy of the artist
Ana Vaz (b. 1986)
Meteoro, Cometas, 2024
Featuring Maïa Tellit Hawad, Hawad, Olivier Marboeuf and Isabel Carvalho
Artist book, risograph print
Edited and published by ATLAS and tambores, a noite
Courtesy of the artist
