Every year, the Cité de l'image invites an artist from the medium of photography to create a special and limited photo edition. Bruno Oliveira was invited for the second edition.
BRUNO OLIVEIRA
Whispers of the Koi, 2023
Hahnemühle 60 x 40 cm, unframed
Edition: 30 + 3 AP
EURO 240.-
This photograph forms part of The Evil’s Lullaby, a series in which my travels through Japan with my partner become a way to soothe the inner turbulence awakened by illness. In Whispers of the Koi, the quiet movement of the fish becomes a visual echo of the calm we searched for together. Their slow, circular motion mirrors the intimate moments where love and nature softened the 'inner evil', transforming heaviness into breath.
The koi, ancient symbols of resilience, float just beneath the surface, as if carrying away the unrest we cannot name. Their presence becomes a lullaby in itself: delicate, continuous, grounding. This image reflects how, during our journey, small fragments of peace, like watching koi glide through water, helped turn moments of darkness into light, reminding us that healing often begins in silence and companionship.
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Biography
Born in 1993 in Sanfins, Portugal, Bruno Oliveira grew up in Luxembourg, where he currently lives and works. As a visual artist, he sees himself above all as a visual poet, exploring photography and video as sensitive languages capable of expressing the unspeakable.
His work draws from personal memories: fragments of childhood, invisible wounds, forgotten or reimagined moments. Through image-making, he seeks to give form to what has been lived in silence - as if writing poems with light, blending tenderness, tension, and mystery.
His photographs and videos often hover in a liminal space: are they real or imagined? Documentary or staged? This intentional ambiguity opens a space for doubt, poetry, and interpretation. It invites the viewer to feel more than to understand, to be moved rather than explained to.
In 2015, Bruno left his job as an educator to study visual arts at ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels, where he obtained a Master’s degree. There, he found a rare kind of freedom: the freedom not to choose between narrative and abstraction, between the intimate and the political.
His projects also explore themes of community, migration, displacement, and belonging. He listens to others’ stories with the same care he brings to his own, weaving them into a fragmented visual narrative where objects, places, and gestures carry emotional weight.
“A portrait doesn’t always require a face. Sometimes, a place or an object can say just as much.”
With a contemplative and ambiguous aesthetic, he creates a body of work suspended between memory and fiction, between reality and dream. His work has been shown in various contexts in Luxembourg and abroad, and he is currently developing several series centered on reclaiming childhood through the language of the body, space, and light.