My Ray of Sunshine
My Ray of Sunshine
Lais Andrade
Video and sound installation – 2024
About the artwork
A mother and daughter, separated by the sea, use soundwaves to communicate. This installation reflects on the memory of the transatlantic slave trade across the concepts spiral time and critical fabulation. If time repeats and overlaps, today’s technologies can capture past moments. This work imagines the voice messages an enslaved mother could have sent her daughter. Technology and art access a dimension previously unreachable due to time barriers, showing history unfolding now. An African woman is captured and taken across the Atlantic, leaving her daughter behind. We hear the voice messages telling her story, contrasted by the sea’s violent sounds. The two-channel video installation explores this duality by presenting one screen with the mother at sea and the other with the daughter on land. However, when the images converge, they symbolize their enduring connection across time and space. Despite colonization’s violent memory, this video manifests affection as an act of resistance.
The creative process
The main elements of my dramaturgy are autobiography and migration. I primarily draw from my own experiences as an immigrant and those of my community. Building on this documentation, I incorporate research and critical fabulation to write stories that resonate emotionally and raise awareness of themes like colonization, racism, and migration.
A key goal of my work is to bring invisible stories to light—stories of people who have been excluded from history books. By basing my narratives on real events, I create characters and make these stories personal, telling them in a sensitive manner. This approach not only raises awareness but also sparks debate about marginalized stories from the past, present and future.
About the artist
Laís Andrade is a Brazilian-Portuguese director, writer, and visual artist whose work is mainly inspired by migration and autobiography. Since 2024, she has been a FilmEU PhD student, researching and creating on the representation of slavery in film. She wrote and directed “Green House” (2021), an award-winning short fiction film about migrant workers in portuguese illegal plantations, based on stories from her community. She also directed short films such as “Gagne Pain” (2021) and “Diamante” (2023), and co-wrote “As if the World Had No West” (2024) with Mónica de Miranda and Ondjaki. Her next short film, currently in pre-production, is based on her own migration experience as a child. Learn more
