Grain

Grain (2025), a photographic series comprising 20 works, emerges from the documentation of the creation process of a sand mandala, an ancient Tibetan Buddhist tradition. From the initial trace to its dissolution, the series unfolds Janaína Miranda’s ongoing inquiry into the nature of reality and its intrinsic relation to impermanence.

The conception of Grain is grounded in the idea of art as process and openness, pointing toward a foundational paradox: the photographic medium’s attempt to arrest a ritual designed to vanish. Photography-as-trace.

Between frames that capture the tactility and intimacy of manual labor, the series reveals a grammar of care and attentiveness—one that sustains form and condenses temporalities. As the mandala is dissolved and returns to emptiness, the work reflects on seeing as a practice of letting go—and suggests that, in this interval, photography may negotiate a different economy of time, affect, and the commons.