Presenting the work of Giana De Dier.
Real Sociedad Fotográfica, Madrid, 12 February to 7 March 2026
What do we remember about places that were once ours? How do we make sense of the fragmented stories that persist in our memory? Postcards of Memory. Visual Notes of Places Not Forgotten constructs the memories that Giana De Dier holds of El Terraplén, a historic area of great vibrancy in the Old Quarter of Panama City. It was a space where everyday life revolved around the bustle of the market—amid the cries of vendors and the constant flow of buyers—accompanied by the rhythms of the fishing dock and the unceasing noise of cars.
The exhibition brings together three series. I Remember You, But the Truth Is It Was All a Dream is a visual poem built from De Dier’s memories of El Terraplén during the 1980s and 1990s. Through the appropriation of press and archival images, the compositions evoke, in an affective way, a lived space; a memory represented by others, from the emotional distance offered by the objective gaze of an unexperienced reality.
In We Will Meet Again Because Everything Repeats Itself, De Dier explores the circularity of time. In the absence of historical sources documenting Afro-Caribbean presence in Panama, the artist interrogates diaspora archives and imagines the people depicted inhabiting the Terraplén of her memory, thus establishing an affective and temporal relationship between these figures and her recollections.
Do Not Forget Me is the silent cry of places that remain unforgotten. This series recreates the vitality and dynamism of El Terraplén’s most emblematic spaces—the dock, the market, and the surrounding streets.
Through the use of historical photographs and collage as a visual strategy, Postcards of Memory. Visual Notes of Places Not Forgotten anticipates the condition of memory and reconstructs scenes of everyday life that strive to persist, despite modernisation and the re-signification of the territory, which has undergone numerous urban renewals in recent years. De Dier composes fragmented images that function as incomplete records of a daily passage of time, shaped by the emotional bonds formed with the place and the community that inhabits it.
