Portugal opens its statues (gently) – Jeune Afrique

On the coffee table, a huge blue ceramic rod proudly points to the ceiling. On the floor, a large three-by-two-meter drawing is a statue of the Marquis of Pombal (1699-1782), an important Portuguese politician, slave owner, attacked by a gymnast and cherub with painted faces like those of the Amazonian peoples. On the walls, sketches, photographs, some mold spots.

Bearing, with sparkling eyes, a piece of coral hanging around his neck, Angolan-born artist Marcio Carvalho enthusiastically presents his work in his small workshop in Lisbon. There is seriousness in his paintings mixed with humor and a bit of provocation as well, in a country always gargling with its past, its explorers and its “discoveries”. It is also why curator Antonio Pinto Ribeiro has chosen two Carvalho drawings to appear in ‘Europe Oxala’, the exhibition which takes place at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon until August 22, after passing through Marseille (Museum) and before opening at Tervuren (AfricaMuseum).

Patrice Lumumba vs. Leopold II

Taken from the “Falling Thrones” series, the works presented by Marcio Carvalho are, if you will, fight scenes. Initially, Mozambican feminist and independent activist Josina Abiatar Muthimba Machel dressed as judo and performed epón on Portuguese King João 1^Verse. The second is Patrice Lumumba also in the judoka costume that makes the Belgian King Leopold II fly. In both cases, historical European figures were painted in black and white from very real equestrian statues.

“I like to use the image of judo, because in this martial art, we use the opponent’s strength to gain an advantage,” the artist explains. We must take power from power systems. But demolishing a monument, I think is a great art show, can’t be replicated. Using drawing with statues of colonists or slave traders in public, I try to get everyone to question the way we interact with public objects. I try to get communities to rethink the common space for a better life together. »

“Fall of Thrones” – more than a hundred drawings of various sizes – systematically depicted real statues of controversial historical figures, in black and white, facing athletes from various Olympic disciplines painted in colour. “The series demonstrates well what a creative approach to colonial history could consist of,” the curators wrote in their catalog. This project uses the Olympic Games and their power structure to evoke, in the style of athletic competition, the history of these oppressed peoples that is a matter of remembering: each representative athlete represents a woman or a man. He fought against colonialism. rulers. A rare element in this kind of approach is the artist’s humor. For him, statues glorifying slave traders or colonists should symbolically be demolished, but kept in public so that no one would forget.

Memories for the future

This is the approach that Antonio Pinto Ribeiro has advocated for many years. He did so notably with the Gulbenkian Corporation’s “Proximo Futuro” at the end of the 2000s and then as coordinator of the “Lisbon Ibero-American Capital of Culture” event in 2017. That year, he had dared to install a “decolonial” An exhibition in the heart of the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries), a symbol of the Salsarist style erected in 1960 in the Belém region to commemorate the Portuguese navigators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

A real provocation: “The discoveries in Portugal are sacred,” explains Marcio Carvalho. If we take them away from the Portuguese, it is as if we are depriving them of a part of their CV. Europe Oxala is part of the same kind of approach: a rereading of history in a country whose colonial and slavery past began in the 14th century and only ended between 1974 and 1975, after the fall of the dictatorship.

Antonio Pinto Ribeiro says: “I have been given a carte blanche to organize a contemporary art exhibition on the question of post-memory, with Afro-European artists from three former colonial empires, Portugal, France and Belgium. The title ‘Europe Oxala’ makes it possible to present the other, in Elsewhere, the strange, with an optimistic dimension. “Oxala” is actually a general derivation of “God willing”, with the religious aspect diminished. In this expression there is an openness to the future and hope. Indeed, even if some creations remain highly criticized, the The exhibition displayed within the walls of the Gulbenkian Foundation is far from a hopeless indictment – like Judocas Marcio Carvalho.

The twenty or so artists shown come from emigration, second or third generation. While the former is concerned above all with memories of the past, the latter seeks instead to produce ‘memories of the future’. “My family fled Angola and went into exile in Portugal,” says Marcio Carvalho. The food I ate and the music I listened to contrasted with what I was experiencing outside the family home. I was living in a duality that I tried to hide as much as possible, until I figured out the tools to make sense of it. At some point, I realized that there were also African writers, thinkers, and philosophers…”

oppression and manhood nations

With the help of Congolese plastic artist Aimee Mabanee and French-Algerian visual artist Katia Camille, Antonio Bento Ribeiro brings together creators who, each in their own way, return to the memory issues of the “Afrobis” while expressing a universal message. Thus, Malagasy Malala Andrialavidrazana as French-Algerian Faysal Bagrich masterfully captures the territorial question. The first, with its montage of ancient maps, is “vivid and vibrant paintings that fuse different eras and representations.” The second with “optional purification”, wonderful “a regular blue sky studded with countless stars of different shapes, colors and arrangements” is “an enlarged version of a double dictionary page representing the flags of the countries of the world, covered by the artist with blue tint who preserved only the stars of the national banners.”

As Antonio Pinto Ribeiro points out, “Cartography has always been an essential tool for colonialism. The resources that were looted during the colonial period are still exploited, often by foreign companies. The blue rod drawn by Marcio Carvalho in the Azulejos style, which is not in the exhibition, is not Nothing but a stinging and humorous criticism of these murderous and masculine countries that wanted to subjugate the world to their desires, and they set up here and there flags and monuments.

If the so-called “decolonization” issue has been at the center of controversy for several years in France and Belgium, Portugal still lags behind in this area. “Europa Oxala” is another step towards a better understanding of the past, and is a nice reflection of well-established certainties. According to Monica de Miranda, who also has Angolan origins and works on “Post-Colonial Geography of Lisbon”, this memorial work belongs above all to the children of this complex history of domination and resistance. “We spend a lot of time complaining about not being on the date, while we’re on the date,” she says.