_{Monument to Marquez de Sá da Bandeira © Pedro Medeiros | Echoes Project | 2021}

Part of the XXIV UC Cultural Week, the exhibition dedicated to the city of Lisbon, but signalling other cities and places in Portugal, results from a collective and dialogic exercise of research into its historical and cultural heritage, questioned from its multiple intersections with Portuguese colonial and imperial history. A critical exercise - certainly provisional, in need of deepening and diversification, particularly by exploring other cases and problems, calling upon other voices and arguments - this project contributes in an original and rigorous way to the debates on (post)imperial and colonial pasts and presents, on history(s) and memory(s). About the cemented past, and that which is invisible or neglected, and the present under construction, or in need of urgent reconstruction.

The exhibition is based on a collection of images produced on purpose by photographer Pedro Medeiros and texts produced by academics, activists, museologists, journalists, among other voices and perspectives, and which focus on a diverse range of spaces, actors, institutions and symbols. These, over time, with greater or lesser visibility, have been coining, and changing, the way we think and relate to history, heritage and associated memories that somehow refer to the imperial pasts of the city and its surrounding territories and communities. Within the broad spectrum of themes addressed, Lisbon is interrogated from elements that transcend the limits of the city (and the country), integrating other spaces and actors - national, imperial, international and transnational.

Covering a variety of themes that manifest themselves, in different ways, in heritage - from labour and social issues to the urban spatialisation of ethnic-racial difference, among others - the exhibition offers numerous examples of the ways in which these reflections on (post)colonial and (post)imperial history(s) and memory(s) can, and should, be achieved: in an informed, reflective and scrutinising manner of the past and contemporary dynamics that shape our relationship with history, heritage and memory. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, with the same title, published by Tinta da China, which frames the works presented in the exhibition with the full texts. There are two versions, one in Portuguese and another in English.

Colonial Echoes: Histories, Heritages and Memories is part of the ECHOES project - European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities - funded by the European Union (H2020) which discusses the existing colonial heritage, both in Europe and in other continents. Conceiving heritage as a legacy and also as a presence, it questions modes of appropriation and dispossession in contemporary societies. It also seeks to understand languages and strategies for the valorisation of colonial heritage that can create conditions for more informed and rigorous, participatory and inclusive debates. It analyses institutional actions and initiatives of social movements and activist groups that place colonial heritage at the centre of contested public debates about history and memory.

The project is developed by: University of Hull (UK); Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra (Portugal); University of Aarhus (Denmark); University of Amsterdam (Netherlands); University of Warsaw (Poland); University of Rennes (France); Fudan University (Shanghai - China); Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); and University of Cape Town (South Africa).


Support: Department of Life Sciences of the University of Coimbra