Lívia Melzi

Lívia Mezi is a Brazilian artist whose work bridges photography, archival research, and decolonial critique. With a dual academic background in oceanography and photography, she began her artistic career in 2013 as a resident at ENSP in Arles, where she exhibited at the Off of the Rencontres d'Arles and was nominated for the Voies Off Prize.

From 2016 to 2018, Mezi pursued a Master's in Photography at Paris VIII. There, she developed L'enrichissement des collections, a project inspired by the photographic archives of the BNF. This body of work questions the role of European imagery in shaping a fictionalized vision of Brazilian nature and has since been exhibited internationally and nominated for the Caisse d'Épargne Prize.

Following political shifts in Brazil in 2018, Mezi turned her focus to the Tupinambá cloaks, an ethnographic collection emblematic of colonial entanglements. This project has been shown at Photo Athens, Imago Lisboa, and Circulation(s), earning her the Grand Prix at the 2021 Salon de Montrouge and a solo exhibition at Palais de Tokyo in 2022. That same year, she joined the Fiminco Foundation residency, where large-format photography became central to her practice.

Her most recent work engages with the National Museum of Rio, exploring the ruins and surviving objects of the 2018 fire, while documenting the ongoing reconstruction of Brazil's oldest museum.