CARROS

CARROS (cars) is a project that investigates the intersections of urban temporality and visual perception. The work challenges the literal interpretation of its title, moving beyond the automobile as a machine to explore it as a symbol of displacement

The project CARROS, by artist Marina Zabenzi, exists at the intersection of a photobook and a film, presenting itself as a high-speed plea that investigates the urgency of the present moment. Building on a body of work centered on diptychs since 2015, the artist explores the concept of a "continuous-body" between human beings and automobiles, establishing provocative parallels between gesture and road, skin and rubber, tenderness and aluminum. This poetics of comparison, however, does not seek equality; instead, it uses contrast and visual shock as tools to dehabituate the gaze, forcing the mind to revise its contours and produce new meanings from the friction.

The work is anchored in a dense critical layer regarding the notion of progress, observing the cartographic and social fissures opened by the dominance of the machine over the landscape. Zabenzi sews together narratives born from the "failure" of bodies that never conformed to imperialist and normative ideals. Drawing inspiration from the premise of the Queer Art of Failure, the project transfigures the condition of the outsider into creative power, positioning the disobedient body—the machine-body, the prosthetic-body, the dissident-body—as the central narrator of a reinvented cartography.

Captured and staged over three years across various Brazilian landscapes, the images are cut and reassembled with a cinematic logic, requiring the audience to set their own gaze in motion. The affective dimension of the work is reinforced by the titles of the pieces, all taken from clichés of popular love songs; this imbues the collection with the atmosphere of a road trip and the weight of an insistent passion. By merging fiction and narrative, CARROS explodes the boundaries between the margin and the center, celebrating the detour and the stubbornness of those who persist. Ultimately, it is a melancholy scandal and an ode to persistence, seeking to celebrate life through a disarmed happiness and the raw sweat of those who refuse to stop.