After works such as the portrait of LGBT families in Portugal, the artist is proud to show the reality of red-haired people in Portugal.

The project named “Fado Ruivo” intends to show a reality that is not so linked to the Portuguese, the redheads. Mag told The Portugal News that the name was chosen spontaneously. Since the objective was to show ginger hair people in Portugal, the challenge was to “try to find a word that describes what Portugal is”. Despite the name of her projects being found spontaneously, Mag had already remembered the word Saudade, but ended up choosing Fado, because associated with red hair “it becomes even more unusual”.

Art as a message

Art can be a form of communication and Mag's work is no exception. In her work, Mag intends to create “the portrait of minorities, niches”. In this case, the message conveyed is the association of the Portuguese with redheads. Usually, the artist manages to find people to photograph through Instagram, and, to her amazement, several people responded and agreed to help Mag with her project.

The importance of representation

As already mentioned, ginger-haired people are not common in Portugal, they are often associated with other nationalities, such as the Irish or Scottish. In the Portuguese media, few people have natural red hair, and the actress Sandra Faleiro, for example, can be highlighted as an example. In this context, Mag told The Portugal News that “most people were happy for two reasons: the first has to do with representation”.



When being photographed, people felt seen and found the invitation curious, as they had not thought of red hair as a minority. What's more, Mag discovered during the project that most of the people photographed "had difficult childhoods" because of their hair colour. The artist adds that for those photographed, the project was a way to help them “to evade the more negative perspective” of red hair, which led to people being stigmatised during various stages of their lives.



The artist manages to point out that “living with or photographing these people” made her perceive “the reality of being a ginger-haired”, which she perceived to have been associated with something negative, in the narrative of those who participated in the project.

New projects

Mag is already preparing new projects, with an Instagram post where she is looking for people over the age of 50 with tattoos All of her work can be seen on her Instagram page at @mag_____rodrigues, or on her official website https://www.magrodrigues.com/

Author

Deeply in love with music and with a guilty pleasure in criminal cases, Bruno G. Santos decided to study Journalism and Communication, hoping to combine both passions into writing. The journalist is also a passionate traveller who likes to write about other cultures and discover the various hidden gems from Portugal and the world. Press card: 8463. 

Bruno G. Santos