No âmbito da 6ª edição do CEEC – Concurso de Estímulo ao Emprego Científico Individual (2023), foram atribuídos quatro novos contratos ao IHA, um para Investigador Júnior, dois para Investigador Auxiliar e um para Investigador Principal – painel de Artes.
Conheça os investigadores e os seus projetos.
Ana Janeiro – Investigadora Júnior
Projeto: “Photography and memory in family albums from Daman, Dadra and Nagar Haveli: Private archives for an unofficial History”
The research project proposes to investigate and critically interpret the photographic albums of the communities of ex-Portuguese colonies in South Asia: of Daman, Dadra and Nagar Haveli. These diasporic communities migrated from the territories of origin after its integration into the Indian Union (1961). The research aims to study, preserve and disseminate their stories which correspond to a particular historical time. The central areas of research revolve around memory, archive and photography, and insert themselves into postmemory, post-colonial and decolonial studies.
Afonso Dias Ramos – Investigador Auxiliar
Projeto: “No Stone Left Unturned: Art Theory and Public History in the Contemporary Controversies around Colonial-era Monuments and Images”
This project provides a comprehensive historical contextualisation and transnational analysis of two of the most controversial global protests to decolonise contemporary visual culture over the last decade: the iconoclastic interventions on, and the public contestations surrounding the monuments and memorials perceived to whitewash the violence of imperialism and slavery in public spaces; but also the equally acrimonious disputes over the right to showcase explicit images of the violence of those historical events in museums, books, or films. Considering these divisive debates over colonial history together for the first time, this project investigates the transformative role that visual and material culture has come to play in driving these present campaigns, and how this unprecedented turn challenges how the fields, discourses, and institutions of art address and redress the violence of modern imperial history. Structured around a number of case studies bound by common pleas and kindred strategies but cutting across linguistic, geographic and national borders, the goal is to systematise the most incendiary and mediatised of such protests from a long historical view and as part of a transnational struggle today. This, in turn, serves to consider some of the potentials and limitations of the ever-increasing demands to decolonise the practice, writing and display of art, challenging both the museum as an institution as well as the public art practice, by raising new questions about the possibility of a post-representational era.
Basia Sliwinska – Investigadora Auxiliar
Projeto: “Arts activism for women’s reproductive rights in Portugal, Poland and Spain”
This project will interrogate how arts activism can engage European Union (EU) values and goals for reproductive justice, the human right to bodily autonomy. It focuses on three EU countries post-1989 where access to reproductive care is highly restrictive (Poland); significant progress has been made (Spain); and where it is available but obstructed (Portugal). The comparison between the three countries is proposed due to their common Catholic context and transitions from oppressive political systems towards democracy. It will be the first study of European reproductive justice to understand the instrumental role of arts activism towards the EU’s motto United in Diversity.
In Europe, 95% of women of reproductive age live where reproductive care seems accessible and legal. Yet, multiple barriers still contribute to significant access inequalities, undermining the EU’s values of gender justice and equality. Violations of rights, e.g. in Poland, Portugal, Spain have galvanised arts activism to advocate for change. Arts activism generates novel methods mediating circumstances where traditional forms of protest fail, and develops innovative visual and performative strategies, e.g. wearing specific colours (black for Black Protests in Poland ongoing since 2016), fostering diverse channels of dissemination (Paula Rego’s Abortion Series (1998-1999, Portugal), or intervening into public spaces (the art collective Luzinterruptus in 2014 in Madrid, Spain).
The project will originate a new cross-disciplinary approach to reproductive justice enabling knowledge exchange between key disciplines: art practice, history and theory, healthcare, human rights and law. The increasing curtailment of reproductive rights in Europe evidences urgency for the project. This cutting-edge research aims to develop knowledge on three key objectives: 1.theorise arts activist practices for EU values and goals and reproductive justice in post-1989 Europe; 2.identify and analyse the advocacy strategies they generate; 3.determine how this cultural work captures and mediates women’s lived experiences of reproductive justice.
The outcomes will innovate at three levels: 1.Empirically: gather, map and critically ground culturally specific arts activist strategies for reproductive justice. 2.Methodologically; break new ground by founding a cross-disciplinary field of humanities as activism. 3.Conceptually: integrate discourses on artistic practice, reproductive care and rights to study how women’s lived experiences inform arts activism to increase reproductive justice in Europe.
