Portugal in Japan and Japan in Portugal through artistic objects and visual culture: the role of art in the imagination of values and discourses

Supervisor/s: António Sousa Ribeiro and Alexandra Curvelo

Doctoral Programme: Heritages of Portuguese Influence

My proposal is to research material and visual culture, tangible and intangible, produced in Portugal and and also in Japan, and specifically the relationship between the two as integrated systems of representation of the western and eastern paradigms. Since these archetypes are wide projections of one over the other, artworks play an important role in our understanding of several procedures. The research will incorporate the analysis of the art market, exhibitions (viewed as recreations of specific cultural significance in some of the artworks), speeches on these devices, cultural organizations (and institutions), and the visual heritage of the Portuguese presence in Japan, as well as the historical relations between Portugal and Japan, considered especially in the contemporary societies of both countries (since 1860). As a result, the academic and specialized discourse, mass culture and even tourism practices could be included as research data. It is therefore dismissed the distinction between major and minor arts, in order to promote an understanding of the diplomatic role of art objects and visual culture - somehow working as texts of a fruitful intellectual and diplomatic relationship.