The imagination has the power to open doors to alternate states of perception, where the familiar transforms into the extraordinary. This interplay of memory, sensation, and space shapes Alegoría, an exhibition by Flávia Junqueira presented by Sorondo Projects in collaboration with Reiners Contemporary. Through her meticulously staged photographs, Junqueira reimagines historic and theatrical venues, infusing them with vibrancy and inviting viewers to reconsider the narratives these spaces carry.

The exhibition features four works spanning Europe and Latin America, including two captured at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. This emblematic theater, steeped in tradition, becomes the backdrop for Junqueira’s artistic interventions. Within its grand interiors, her compositions create a striking juxtaposition of permanence and transience, employing color and form to reframe the space’s storied legacy. Undertaken during the Liceu’s 175th-anniversary celebrations, the project blurred boundaries between art and audience, as visitors were invited to immerse themselves in the installation—a fleeting, participatory moment that brought a playful yet profound reimagining of this cultural icon.

Junqueira’s exploration continues in the Palacio de Linares in Madrid, where the opulent interiors serve as a counterpoint to her deliberate compositions. The vivid imagery of her work, often incorporating elements that suggest fragility, stands in dialogue with the Palacio’s architectural permanence. This dynamic between the ephemeral and the enduring is a hallmark of her practice, encouraging viewers to reflect on the fluidity of time and the layered histories embedded within architectural spaces.

In Rio de Janeiro’s Teatro Municipal, Junqueira takes a different approach. Here, delicate “pompas de jabón” (soap bubbles) replace her signature balloons, floating across the neoclassical interiors with an ephemeral grace. The bubbles act as a metaphor for impermanence, their fragile beauty contrasting with the weight of the theater’s historical and cultural significance. This work, linking the European and Brazilian venues, exemplifies the artist’s ability to connect disparate spaces through shared themes of memory, history, and transformation.

Marcos Moraes writes of Junqueira’s work, “Born from a desire to break the rigidity of a rational understanding of space and to question the hierarchy of our information, her propositions invite us to revisit places we think we know and stories we believe we master. To fly, like to dream, is necessary—and it is possible when we are moved and displaced from our immediate, unquestioned certainties.”

In Alegoría, Junqueira invites us to reconsider the spaces we inhabit and the histories we inherit. By inserting delicate yet striking elements into these storied venues, she shifts their narratives, opening pathways for new interpretations. As Oswald de Andrade wrote, "Only anthropophagy unites us." Junqueira’s interventions embody this ethos, consuming and reinterpreting established spaces to craft something distinctly her own. Her work bridges the ephemeral and the enduring, inspiring us to reimagine the familiar and take flight into new areas of perception and understanding.