My artistic and curatorial practice investigates how histories are constructed and remembered across human and non-human temporalities. Through photography and archival research, I explore how places embody memory and how landscapes are inscribed with traces of time, through geological processes, cultural artifacts and stories. By engaging with deep time and philosophical frameworks of temporality, my work reimagines official histories as contingent narratives, exposing their constructed nature and opening space for alternative possibilities.
In my practice, I juxtapose historical materials with photographs and texts, focusing on how photographic practice intersects with notions of deep time, geological traces, agricultural practices, and cultural mythologies. I examine how material and mythical elements of landscapes intersect with collective memory, questioning how we forget and mourn across generations. By positioning photography as both a historical and speculative tool, I look for connections between the materiality of land and the emotional geographies of belonging and displacement.
My research focuses on the intersection between placemaking and local history. I am interested in issues related to cultural heritage and linguistic traditions, which I situate within specific territories. This involves exploring the epistemology of a territory, focusing the layered temporalities of the land, acknowledging human and more-than-human actors in histories and narratives connected to agriculture, fishing, and the historiography of time.
Mercè Torres Ràfols. Frost
Born in 1995 in Catalonia, Spain, Mercè Torres Ràfols is a visual artist based in Gothenburg, Sweden since 2019.
Torres Ràfols holds a Master’s degree in Photography from HDK-Valand (2019-2021) and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona (2013-2019). She has also studied Scandinavian History at the University of Gothenburg (2022).
Among her exhibitions are Rubble is a Seed so Red (2025) at Konstepidemin, Gothenburg, Igantus Fatus (2024) at Detriti Gallery, Gothenburg. In collaboration with Åsa Sonjasdotter, The Kale Bed Is so Called Because There Is Always Kale in It (2023) at Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Flora Italica (2023) at Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen and Odla överflod (2024) at Lund Konsthall, Lund.
In addition to individual exhibitions, she has been involved in collaborative projects such as the Fotobok Gbg photobook festival and founder of the Garden Loops collective.
Since 2024 she has been curator and coordinator of Galleri Résistance (Göteborg).
Photo by Albert Martinson, 2024
