{"id":55487,"date":"2019-09-05T14:02:10","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T17:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=55487"},"modified":"2025-09-13T14:08:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T17:08:38","slug":"mare-favela-launches-yet-another-fantastic-museum-the-traveling-museum-of-images-miim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=55487","title":{"rendered":"Mar\u00e9 Favela Launches Yet Another Fantastic Museum: The Traveling Museum of Images (MIIM)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Complexo da Mar\u00e9<\/a>, a group of 16 favelas home to 140,000 residents<\/a> in Rio de Janeiro\u2019s North Zone<\/a>, is now home to three incredible museums. The Mar\u00e9 Museum<\/a>, inaugurated May 13, 2006<\/a> as a project of the\u00a0Center for Studies and Solidarity Actions of Mar\u00e9 (CEASM<\/a>), is the oldest and most traditional of the three, given its permanent physical structure. Mar\u00e9\u2019s second museum, the Mar\u00e9 a C\u00e9u Aberto<\/a> (Mar\u00e9 Open-Air Museum), a project under development by Redes da Mar\u00e9<\/a> (Mar\u00e9 Development Networks NGO), is an experiential museum that takes visitors on a walking journey through the community. And finally, the Traveling Museum of Images, or MIIM<\/a>, to use its Portuguese acronym, is Mar\u00e9’s latest, inaugurated on August 18, 2019.<\/p>\n

Mar\u00e9 resident Francisco Valdean, founder of the MIIM, launched the museum with a Facebook post<\/a>, explaining that \u201cthe MIIM is a different kind of museum. It doesn\u2019t have an address; it\u2019s a traveling museum. More specifically, the museum is contained in a cardboard box the size of a shoebox.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unpretentious Facebook launch, along with the concept of housing the museum in a cardboard box, have caused some surprise. In an interview, Valdean joked about visitors\u2019 reactions. “There are two kinds of reactions to the museum. There are people that say ‘Come on, you call that a museum?!’ and there are others that say ‘Wow! It’s a museum!’ Some people doubt that the MIIM is a museum and others are super impressed that, yes, this is a museum!\u201d<\/p>\n

Valdean wears many hats at the MIIM: he\u2019s the museum\u2019s creator, director, curator, and guide. He casually pulls the cardboard box out of a bag, removes the lid, and opens the museum. Inside there are three permanent exhibitions: Monoculars, Photographic Negatives, and Albums of Private Lives in Mar\u00e9. Before \u201centering\u201d the museum, visitors sign their names in a guest log, also kept inside the box. Valdean hopes to eventually cover three themes at the museum: culture, daily life, and the politics of images in Mar\u00e9, covering the period from Mar\u00e9’s origins<\/a> in 1940 to present day. Valdean\u2019s archive is not yet complete. For the Monocular (mini slide viewer) exhibit, he hopes to achieve a collection of 100 images. For the Private Lives exhibit, the idea is to have two parts: first, a series of 6×4 photos, and second, texts where he describes images that he hasn\u2019t photographed, inviting visitors to create images that accompany the texts in their minds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Though Valdean is still in the process of acquiring photos for the permanent exhibitions, other artists have already expressed interest in putting on temporary exhibitions at the MIIM, and Valdean has begun to put together a program.<\/p>\n

Visitors can experience the museum sitting at a bar, at a barbecue, on their porch, or in a classroom at school, for example, all the while conversing with the museum\u2019s guide-curator-director-creator. The museum\u2019s archive includes old and new photos. Each mini slide viewer holds a surprise for the visitor. One such surprise is a photo of a group of students at the local Escola Municipal Bahia<\/a> school, where Valdean studied and now works as a sociology teacher. Another slide viewer displays a photo of Marielle Franco<\/a> holding a protest banner in support of the “Free our Sacred Objects” campaign<\/a>. Valdean took the photo of Franco three months before the city councillor was assassinated. In another slide viewer we can see a group of women gathered at the Nova Holanda<\/a> Residents Association, probably during the 1970s, as part of an all-female campaign<\/a> to found the association. The photos bring visitors up close and personal with Mar\u00e9\u2019s streets, squares, events, and residents, as well as Valdean\u2019s own personal life: his friends from school, his wife, and his father-in-law\u2019s bar in the Mar\u00e9 favela of Vila do Jo\u00e3o<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the end of the visit to the museum, Valdean puts the images back in the cardboard box and closes it. But the conversation continues once the box is closed, with visitors impressed by the simplicity of MIIM and the irony of its name. The acronym resembles the Portuguese word for “me,” reminding us that every Mar\u00e9 resident holds a museum within them\u2014an archive of memories of Mar\u00e9 and the city of Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuseums today need to be re-thought<\/a>, to reflect and reevaluate their purpose. A museum can\u2019t just be a physical space, standing still waiting for visitors to come to it, which is the way we usually think of museums,\u201d said Valdean. \u201cInstead of waiting for visitors to come to them, museums could go to the people, go to schools, or to Family Health Clinics<\/a>. MIIM is designed to go where people are, but at the same time it could motivate people to go to traditional museums as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Although the \u2018I\u2019 in MIIM stands for itinerant, Valdean prefers to refer to the museum using the word ambulante<\/em>, which is often used in the context of traveling street vendors. He explains that he has had lots of different jobs since he arrived in Rio from Cear\u00e1, a state in northeast Brazil, aged 15, including a three-year stint as a street vendor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I arrived in Baixa do Sapateiro<\/a> [one of Mar\u00e9’s favelas] I was given the nickname \u2018Para,\u2019 because people assumed I was from Para\u00edba [a state in northeast Brazil, neighboring Cear\u00e1],\u201d he says. \u201cI used to say \u2018I\u2019m not from Para\u00edba, I\u2019m from Cear\u00e1.\u2019 Everyone in Rio thought that all northeasterners were from the same place. Then I realized that \u2018Para\u2019 was a kind of collective name and that there were dozens of \u2018Paras\u2019 from lots of different places in the Northeast. I realized that it was a term used by residents to say that you weren\u2019t a local.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valdean remembers that life as a migrant wasn\u2019t easy. In his case, it was photography that opened doors for him in Mar\u00e9. \u201cMigrants don\u2019t walk freely across Mar\u00e9, but I had my camera with me. It was rare to have a camera in those days and my group of friends would invite me out with them to take photos.”<\/p>\n

Living in the 500-resident village of Cachoeira Grande, in Greater Rio<\/a>, Valdean only completed his studies through third grade\u2014that was the highest level of education available for Cachoeira residents at the time. But Valdean\u2019s aunt lived in Nova Holanda and his mother lived in Baixa do Sapateiro, both favelas in Complexo da Mar\u00e9. He went to live with his mother. Now he lives in Morro do Timbau<\/a> in Mar\u00e9 with his wife Viviane and his daughter Luiza, and has now lived in Mar\u00e9 for 22 years. \u201cMigrants always bring dreams with them on their journey, don\u2019t they? My dream was to study a bit more and get to finish high school,\u201d says Valdean.<\/p>\n

Balancing his studies and his work, Valdean managed to finish grade school via a supplementary course and, in 2003, began high school at Escola Bahia. The following year, he enrolled in a professional photography course at the School of Popular Photographers<\/a> run by the Favelas Observatory<\/a> NGO, located in Nova Holanda. Having completed high school and the photography course just as social inclusion policies were being promoted more widely in Rio, Valdean was able to study Social Sciences at Rio de Janeiro\u2019s State University, UERJ<\/a>. He then obtained a Masters Degree in Visual Anthropology and is currently midway through a Ph.D. in Arts. As part of his Ph.D., Valdean has been working on photos from the favelas of Mar\u00e9.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The idea to create MIIM was the result of Valdean\u2019s experience as a photographer in Mar\u00e9, along with his academic and artistic training. In 2018, while in artistic residency at the State University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Valdean discovered the Fiotim Museum, a project created by the artist Jorge Fonseca. The Fiotim Museum fit inside a car and the name was a play on words based on the famous Inhotim Museum<\/a>. Another important influence for Valdean was the 2015 Interiores da Mar\u00e9 <\/em>(Mar\u00e9 Interiors<\/a>)\u00a0<\/em>exhibition by artists Henrique Gomes from Brazil and Antonello Veneri from Italy, held at the Galp\u00e3o Bela Mar\u00e9 arts center. The exhibition consisted of photos of Mar\u00e9 residents in their houses. The photos were printed on panels, some of which were displayed inside the arts center while others were displayed on the street outside. Valdean helped Henrique take down the photos after the exhibition and deliver them to the residents who were photographed. He remembered that in one of the houses, a married couple was upset, thinking that their photo had been left out on the street. Gomes defended his project, saying that the exhibition as agreed upon involved placing certain photos inside the arts center and others on the street.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the photo of the couple was displayed outside on the street, everyone who saw it was worried and went to the couple\u2019s house to see if something bad had happened. I thought to myself ‘that’s what I’m looking for,’\u201d said Valdean. \u201cIn the eyes of Mar\u00e9 residents, the fact that the photo of the couple was displayed outside on the street could only mean violence. But neither the photo of the couple nor the exhibition as a whole had anything to do with violence. It was just that for people living in Mar\u00e9, a photo outside had to mean violence: there was no other possible explanation [as to why someone’s photo would be displayed in the street]. That was the moment that my research took another direction. I started to think about how the city of Rio imagines Mar\u00e9 and how Mar\u00e9 imagines itself. Mar\u00e9 is also impacted by the images of the community that are shared by the media<\/a>. Regarding this symbolic field of images, focusing on this issue, I wanted to create a tool by which I could understand how Mar\u00e9 imagines itself. And it was in these last few months that I had the idea to create this museum.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his master’s thesis, entitled \u201cImagens da Mar\u00e9: narrativas fotogr\u00e1ficas de um territ\u00f3rio favelado<\/em>\u201d (Images of Mar\u00e9: photographic narratives of a favela territory), Valdean identified three archetypal images of Mar\u00e9 produced by mainstream media: images of violence, images of removals, and images of historic Mar\u00e9’s stilt-supported houses.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy interpretation is that photojournalism shows Mar\u00e9 from a specific point of view<\/a>. It follows State actions: evictions are done by the State, which garners media interest. There was a lot of coverage of Mar\u00e9\u2019s stilt houses in 1979 when the Project Rio urban renewal program<\/a> was underway\u2014this was also a project undertaken by the State that got a lot of media coverage. When it comes to violence, photographs show the actions of the State too. Nobody seems to be interested in photos showing the point of view of Mar\u00e9 residents, different from what we do at the Imagens do Povo<\/a> (Images of the People) photography project.” Along with fellow photographer and Mar\u00e9 resident Bira Carvalho, Valdean is one of the coordinators of the Imagens do Povo photo archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On beginning his Ph.D. in Arts, Valdean proposed researching photos created by Mar\u00e9 residents who had not been trained in photography. For Valdean, “This turned into the idea to create the museum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the idea of turning a simple cardboard box into a museum causes some surprise and can seem like a joke, visitors quickly recognize the complexity and creativity of the concept: the museum provokes reflection not only on the production of images regarding and inside the favela, but also on the equipment and tools employed in their preservation and dissemination.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Valdean, who teaches sociology at two schools in Mar\u00e9, talks about the different reactions from his students, many of whom have never been to a traditional museum but who have visited the MIIM, as well as friends, neighbors, and locals at his father-in-law\u2019s bar in Vila do Jo\u00e3o. Since launching the museum on August 18, Mar\u00e9\u2019s newest museum is already scheduling visits. Interested visitors can book by contacting Valdean through MIIM\u2019s Facebook page, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Miriane Peregrino is a researcher, <\/em>community journalist, and teacher with a <\/em>Master\u2019s Degree in literature from the State <\/em>University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). In <\/em>2013, she created the Literatura Comunica! <\/em>(\u201cLiterature Speaks!\u201d) literacy project, which <\/em>is active in schools, community libraries, and cultural centers. Born in the interior of Rio state, she has worked in Mar\u00e9 since <\/em>2013.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Complexo da Mar\u00e9, a group of 16 favelas home to 140,000 residents in Rio de Janeiro\u2019s North Zone, is now home to three incredible museums. The Mar\u00e9 Museum, inaugurated May 13, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":162,"featured_media":55490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1288,1328,1268,1271,1670,1284,329],"tags":[396,1144,2108,2109,280,397,1042,674,1197,2449,1366,1143,1160,716,37,281,523,572,2447,1555,1403,651,1142],"writer":[1532],"translator":[1401],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-55487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-by-community-contributors","9":"category-favelaculture","10":"category-favelaqualities","11":"category-favela-tourism","12":"category-interviews-profiles","13":"category-solutions","14":"tag-art","15":"tag-baixa-do-sapateiro","16":"tag-ceasm","17":"tag-community-museum","18":"tag-complexo-da-mare","19":"tag-education","20":"tag-espocc","21":"tag-memory","22":"tag-greater-rio","23":"tag-marielle-franco","24":"tag-analyzing-media-portrayal-of-favelas","25":"tag-morro-do-timbau","26":"tag-museu-da-mare","27":"tag-museum","28":"tag-north-zone","29":"tag-nova-holanda","30":"tag-observatorio-de-favelas","31":"tag-photography","32":"tag-projeto-rio","33":"tag-redes-de-desenvolvimento-da-mare","34":"tag-solution","35":"tag-uerj","36":"tag-vila-do-joao","37":"writer-miriane-peregrino","38":"translator-sarah-jacobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81668,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55487\/revisions\/81668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55487"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=55487"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=55487"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=55487"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=55487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}