Exhibition, 2018
Fernando Santos Gallery, Porto, Portugal
Artists: Manuel Botelho, Daniel Barroca
Curator: Ana Catarina Pinho
Image, Time, Memory is an exhibition that presents the work of Portuguese artists Manuel Botelho (1950) and Daniel Barroca (1976), by establishing a dialogue between the work of both artists, focusing on the visual representations of memory, more specifically the memory and collective imaginary of the Portuguese colonial war (1961-1974).
Botelho's presents us with "Album" (2017) which he developed from vernacular imagery, in this case the photo albums of an unknown Portuguese soldier from the Colonial War, where the artist highlights the performative gestures of the subject, playing with the links between reality and fiction, historical construction and imaginary. Barroca also approaches vernacular imagery, only this time he delves into his fathers photo albums from the same war. In "Soldier Playing with Dead Lizard" (2008), he works with archival imagery in its debris and losses, questioning the limits of historical representation.
Focusing on the appropriation of different types of visual archives, both artists develop different, although complementary, ways of approaching and manipulating images from the past, through strategies that open a certain disquietness caused by those images and also highlight the importance of reconfiguring such images as a way of offering them a role in the present and providing new discursive contexts and meanings.