Makeshift

Curator: Vítor Nieves

This year, we propose the re-exhibition of works by four artists from the Encontros da Imagem collection, selected in alignment with the theme of this edition, “Legacies of Colonialism.” One of the indispensable pieces, as expected, is “Makeshift” by Paweł Starzec, winner of the Discovery Awards in 2017. This was a significant year for the Encontros da Imagem Association, which celebrated its 30th anniversary, while the festival inaugurated a new direction under the leadership of Carlos Fontes.

Makeshift

History is a settlement within a community that establishes the way a community remembers past events. It serves an unprecedented role in organising and maintaining the state. Relying on history means creating an order of the present time, rooted in the past. It can be constructed from scratch, when there’s a need for that. A group of people with an identical perception of past events becomes bonded with collective consciousness. By common saying, it’s winners who write history.

Makeshift is a project on rewriting history in Bosnia and Herzegovina, focusing on mass atrocities of Bosnian War, places where they were committed, and their erased context. In most cases, places used to keep, torture, rape and murder civilians were renovated after the war, and thus restored to their former purpose of buildings of public utility. History is a collectively set narration, so it has the ability of being rewritten from scratch, to omit things that had to be forgotten.

In 2020 the project was published as a digital piece in cooperation with Krzysztof Pijarski and Michał Szota, as a part of the vnLab program: makeshift.vnlab.org.

Escola de Medicina da Universidade do Minho
Universidade do Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga

Opening Hours:

Monday – Friday
09:00–17:30

Saturday and Sunday
Closed