Samir
Dams

Samir Dams is a visual artist and researcher from Belém do Pará, Brazil. His practice investigates the concept of the “image-landscape,” understood as the intersection between territory, collective memory, and dissidence. Since 2014, through his authorial photographic records, Dams has developed an expanded research on the urban landscape of the Amazon, moving between photography, expanded painting, and installation. He works with recycled materials — such as plastic bags, tarps, and adhesive tapes — which function simultaneously as medium and sign, reflecting on consumption, waste, and the symbolic reconstruction of territory. His production weaves together themes such as belonging, informal economies, peripheral urbanization, art and ecology, and queer art, positioning the body as both a political and poetic field. Building on these investigations, Dams proposes site-specific installations and visual interventions that aim to activate new ways of seeing, sensing, and inhabiting the Amazon.

He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Visual Arts at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), where he researches Amazonian photoclubism. He has participated in national and international exhibitions, including the 28th Anapolino Art Salon (Brazil), Fotoativa 40 Years: Web, Flow and Resistance , and the 7th Edition of the Rencontres Photographiques Biennale (2021–2022). He also works as a coordinating collaborator at the Fotoativa Association .

In November and December 2025, he takes part in his first international residency, Planetary Transitions: Potsdam Artist Residency , in Germany. During his residency in Potsdam, he is developing the project Comércios em Trânsito: Urban and Sustainable Perspectives in Art , which investigates the symbolic landscapes and material residues from popular commercial centers, exploring sustainable artistic practices in dialogue with experiences of consumption, waste, and urban social memory.

The DAAD Arts and Media program, the City of Potsdam and the Research Institute for Sustainability – Helmholtz Centre Potsdam (RIFS) have launched a new fellowship programme, the ‘Planetary Transitions: Potsdam Artist Residency’. The fellowship is open to artists from abroad or those who have only recently moved to Germany and will be realised at the RIFS. The fellows work on their projects on campus and are supported in networking with researchers at RIFS as well as cultural and scientific institutions in the greater Potsdam/Berlin area.