Galeria IMAGO LISBOA

Rua do Vale de Santo António 50C, 1170-381 Lisboa

Inauguration → 18 . 10 . 2025 → 06:00 pm

22 . 10 . 2025 → 08 . 11 . 2025

wednesday - saturday → 02:30 pm – 06:30 pm

Curated by

Rui Prata

Artist

Nuno Perestrelo

This work contemplates Portugal’s unresolved colonial trauma, placing side by side anonymous and long-forgotten photographic archives — rescued over years from Lisbon’s flea markets — with images made in 2017 during a journey to Mozambique. It is an exploration of a certain gaze, persistent in the Western world, of an exoticising perception intrinsically linked to structural issues of domination, racism, and violence.

It is also a necessary act of collective and self-criticism, at a time when the 50th anniversary of Portugal’s turbulent decolonization process is being marked — after more than 500 years of colonial rule. We speak of the longest-lasting overseas empire in history, directly responsible for the trafficking of half of the 12 million people who were forcibly taken across the Atlantic and who constituted some of the first enslaved individuals to arrive in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States of America.

A still-dominant Portuguese narrative, rooted in the myth of the “Discoveries”, maintains that the country “gave new worlds to the world”, perpetuating the idea that its colonial rule was softer, less violent, when compared to other imperial powers of the time. And above all, it downplays the role of slavery as the economic foundation and driving force of those centuries.

Divided into distinct conceptual chapters, this work seeks to build bridges between past collective experiences and the present, highlighting the persistent traces of colonialism in the contemporary world.