The films of Ana Vaz activate and question cinema as an art of the (in)visible and instrument capable of dehumanising the human, expanding its connections with other-than-human or spectral forms of life.

In her exhibition at the Secession, Vaz will showcase her new film series Meteoro dedicated to drawing a critical anthropology of contemporary Europe through its landmarks and infrastructures in capitals of empire such as Paris and Porto. Through historical excavations, spectral hallucinations and anticipatory narratives, Vaz’s work reveals the negative imprint of an empire founded upon colonial violence, displacement, erasures, extraction and waste. Shot with high contrast black and white film, emphasising the fictive archaeology implicit in the images, Meteoro forges an archive of the present, guided by the hands and vision of a future traveler whose gaze is the very embodiment of the film and whose sightings are based upon performed contributions by Caribbean writer and performer Olivier Marboeuf, Tuareg researcher Maïa Tellit Hawad and Portuguese artist Isabel Carvalho.