Dear Ana

A lyrical manifestation, expressed through photography and poetic text, of Leticia Valverdes’ award-winning project documenting the artist’s journey back to her grandmother’s motherland of Portugal.

Dear Ana is about Leticia's journey back to her grandmother’s motherland, Portugal. It is a collaborative project with the people she encountered in her village of Mundão who were invited to write a postcard to her now dead grandmother. In doing this they became the fictional friends she believed she had whilst dying with Alzheimer's in Brazil.A lyrical manifestation of Leticia Valverdes’ award-winning project that took her on a journey back to Portugal, her grandmother’s motherland. This extraordinary project resulted in a magical collaboration with the inhabitants of Ana’s birthplace, the village of Mundão. By inviting the villagers to write a postcard to her now dead grandmother, they became the fictional friends she believed she had whilst dying with Alzheimer’s disease in Brazil. Through photography interspersed with poetic text, cyanotypes and votive offerings, this is a personal yet universal story exploring transgenerational trauma, longing, migration, and what it means to feel divided between two cultures. A hundred years on, this is the perfect time to tell this story, as Europe is engulfed in debates about borders, nationalism and migration.