2024-04-21 10:11:20
Nathalie Afonso was born three years before the Carnation Revolution in Vichy, France, but it was only in the mid-1990s, during a period she spent working in Portugal, that she learned the true dimension of the founding event of Portuguese democracy. At that time, taking her first steps in art, she had no idea that her works would mark the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April at the Palace of the Council of Europe, in Strasbourg, where the exhibition The carnations of the revolution” (The carnations of the revolution) is open until April 26th.
His father, a native of Vilar Formoso, a village in Rio de Janeiro at the time caught between the dictatorships of Salazar and Franco, went to France “on the fly” to escape the troops in 1964. He didn’t dare say a word about the country he had left behind. Her mother, from Póvoa de Varzim, had left to make friends with a boy who wanted to marry her. It was from her that she heard the first stories about the poor, sad and gray country of the time, dominated by the Catholic Church, and where it was necessary to “speak very quietly” and “take the vote [dos pais] to school for the teacher to see.”
“My grandfather was imprisoned for eight months in Salamanca”, he recalls in a conversation with Contacto from his studio. The paternal family lived off smuggling and Nathalie’s father started crossing the border as a child to sell coffee in Spain at night. Escaping the regime was, therefore, the natural step to take when the age for military service approached. On the mother’s side, the opposite happened. “My uncles all went to Mozambique and Angola”, she says.
Unlike the dictatorship, the 25th of April was never a topic on the table. “My father waited [algum tempo] before returning to Portugal, because I was still afraid”, recalls the painter, who visited the country for the first time at the age of 15, in 1986. Until adulthood, she maintained a superficial knowledge of the revolution. Contact with April’s heritage finally occurred during the period she spent working in Portugal.
When talking about Portuguese emigration, only men are mentioned, but women also emigrated.
Nathalie Afonso
Portuguese-descendant artist
The forgotten women of the revolution
But, when he looked into the historic date, he came across a narrative that, born within a military movement, was told mainly from the male perspective. She learned about the captain of Abril, Salgueiro Maia, the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), the soldiers and people who took to the streets to put an end to 41 years of dictatorship, but she was not satisfied. “I wanted to know where the women were and what the revolution did for them,” she explains.
Deolinda Rodrigues de Almeida, central figure in the struggle for Angolan independence © Credits: DR
So he started researching and reading everything he could on the subject. In this process, she discovered names such as Deolinda Rodrigues de Almeida, writer, sociologist and central figure in the struggle for Angolan independence who exchanged letters with Martin Luther King Jr.; Maria Lamas, journalist and writer, translator and photographer who fought for human and civic rights, namely women’s equality, during the dictatorship, being arrested three times; Maria Archer, writer who portrayed the colonial reality based on her experiences in Mozambique, Guinea and Angola and addressed the female condition in her texts, ending up persecuted by censorship and PIDE and forced into exile in Brazil.
The faces and legacies of these women, whose courage and militancy helped build the 25th of April but were largely forgotten over the last 50 years, are part of the exhibition that Nathalie Afonso designed for the Council of Europe – which also features other personalities from revolution and decolonization like Salgueiro Maia himself, Zeca Afonso, Amílcar Cabral or Celeste Caeiro, the woman who distributed carnations to the military and who, unintentionally, gave the name to the revolution.
Contacto launches special edition on the 25th of April
Based on the information collected and the perspective of two friends, an anthropologist and a professor of Portuguese politics at the Sorbonne University, the Portuguese-descendant artist chose to portray “both sides” of the 25th of April. “There is a bright side, of celebration and joy, which coincides with a dark side, related to colonialism and the struggle of the people of former colonies for independence”, she elaborates.
Among the set of paintings and drawings on display, there are also personalities who, although not directly linked to the Carnation Revolution, are the product of the freedom it brought. Two examples are António Variações, immortalized in the Portuguese musical panorama due to his eccentricity and eclecticism, or Sara Tavares, whose image is accompanied by the version jazz which he created from “Grândola, Vila Morena”, and which can be listened to via a QR code.
Route marked by Portuguese traditions
Portuguese emigration represented in female © Credits: DR
One of the most striking works in the exhibition shows a female figure dressed in carnations from head to toe. She is barefoot, with her back to the visitor, she carries a suitcase in her left hand. The right hand, raised in farewell, holds a rolled-up Portuguese flag. “This is the image of emigration”, summarizes Nathalie, who here, once again, carried out an exercise of historical reparation towards women.
“When we talk about Portuguese emigration, only men are mentioned, but women also emigrated. Who took care of the slums [bairros de lata nos arredores de Paris onde viviam muitos portugueses], who did the cleaning? The women, they were always there”, he emphasizes.
This is not the first time that Nathalie Afonso’s roots have contaminated her body of work. With a career spanning more than 30 years, he has regularly explored Portuguese history, culture, traditions and customs – from scenes with Portuguese troops who fought in France in the First World War to authors such as Luís de Camões and Fernando Pessoa, as well as traditional costumes. Portuguese, the latter collected in the book “From North to South, Portugal my love” [Do Norte ao Sul, Portugal meu amor] (2022).
The first costume he painted, typical of Minho, in 1994, remains on the original wall, in a travel agency in Póvoa de Varzim, a city where he also has a studio. Since then, Nathalie’s interest in popular culture has spread across the globe. “I like everything that originates from a certain place”, the “ethnoartist” admits, a designation given to her in a biography carried out by a museum in Toulon, in the south of France.
Over the course of three decades, the path of Portuguese descendants crossed paths with that of Portuguese communities. He even exhibited in Luxembourg on Portuguese-speaking African writers, in Montreal on Portuguese immigration to Canada, and created a watercolor for the Portuguese community in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. “I’m very attached to Portugal”, he concludes.
2024-04-21 10:11:20