If a Forest Could Take Its Own Portrait: Regenerative Image-Making in the Paraná Rainforest.

This project explores how an agroforest might participate in creating its own image. It is developed between Misiones (Argentina) and Antwerp (Belgium), and is rooted in the Paraná Rainforest, one of the last remaining fragments of the Atlantic Forest. In Misiones, Cecilia Belén Sandoval will collaborate with local communities to plant a syntropic agroforest system, a regenerative form of agriculture that works in cooperation with forest dynamics rather than extraction.

From within this living environment, Sandoval will develop photosensitive materials using plant-based pigments and soils from the land. Instead of representing the forest from an external point of view, the project explores image-making processes in which the forest itself takes part, shaping its own portrait through its material presence.

Through hands-on workshops, community members become co-authors of the images: they gather pigments, experiment with plant-based photographic processes and produce organic photographs. In a socio-political context marked by extractivism, environmental degradation, and the displacement of Indigenous communities, the project proposes collaboration, care, and regeneration as alternative ways of relating to land, knowledge, and artistic practice.

The research continues in Antwerp with the creation of a Pigment Garden, which functions as a site for plant-based image-making within the Academy. The outcomes include a photographic book, a short film, a syntropic agroforest in Misiones, a Pigment Garden in Antwerp, a research publication and a final exhibition showing how eco-art practices can foster ecological awareness and social engagement.