Artist:
Michael Wesely (born 1963 in Munich, Germany; lives and works in Berlin, Germany).
Lina Kim (born 1965 in São Paulo, Brazil; lives and works in Berlin, Germany).

Materials:
Color and black and white photographs and archival images.

Description:
“Brasília, the capital of Brazil, formally dedicated in 1960, seems more like an architectural myth, a fiction, than a real place. Between the years 2003 and 2009, the Brazilian-Korean artist Lina Kim and the German artist Michael Wesely embarked on a journey into the present-day reality and the archives of this city. One result of their artistic hunt for clues is the Arquivo Brasília, a collection of historical photo material on how Brasília came to be. While conducting their research, Kim and Wesely also photographed themselves in Brasília—choosing their backdrops in part as a result of their archival studies. The time-exposure photographs exaggerate the city’s utopian character even further with their diffuse light, providing some unusual perspectives on this unique place.”
—”Archiv Utopia: Project Brasília,” Kehrer Verlag website.

“In compiling the largest iconographic survey ever undertaken about the city, authors Lina Kim and Michael Wesely combed public archives, sorting through 10,000 images that document Brasilia’s construction—many in a perilous state of deterioration and discolouration—to end up with the final cut of 1,400 color and black and white images.

“As photographic records go, this is an important document that canvases the birth of a city (including President Juscelino Kubitschek’s first expeditions to the site in 1956) through to the foundation works (and the pivotal construction of the city’s cruciform axes) and the totemic 1960 inauguration.”
—Daven Wu, “Arquivo Brasilia by Lina Kim and Michael Wesely,” Wallpaper*, March 9, 2011.