Power

Curator: Elina Heikka

Power

The first artistic representations of the colonial period permeated the collective memory and contributed to the construction of stereotypes about foreign cultures, colouring them with a layer of exoticism, visible in the objects they carried, which disguised the subjugation and exploitation to which they were subjected. An exoticism that survives in the portraits that decorate the cabinets and salons of the wealthy classes and that accumulates in institutional collections.

Today’s society has not yet come to terms with the presence in its cities of the descendants of the empire’s serfs.

They seek to dignify their lives by migrating to the cities that, in the past, they enriched with the wealth of their natural resources and slave labour. This globalisation caused by the massive displacement of populations is changing the perception of the past. This is what Augusto Brázio’s diptychs suggest. Photographs have an extraordinary ability to broaden the meaning of what they show. Now, those who appear as exotic subjects are the representatives of colonial power.

Alejandro Castellote

Galeria do Paço – UMinho
Reitoria, Largo do Paço, 4704-553 Braga

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