Project funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology, based at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Objective
The main objective is to make available information and original articles by Portuguese and foreign authors in the area of Art and Travel. The platform falls within the field of Contemporary Art History but its rationale is grounded in History developed in parallel with other fields of knowledge ranging from Visual Culture to Political Science and the History of Mentalities, passing through Plastic Arts, Artistic Studies and Post-Colonial Studies. It is aimed at students, teachers, researchers, scholars and professionals who share interests and concerns in these key areas.

Project ArTravel. Viagem e Arte Colonial na Cultura Contemporânea
ArTravel. Viagem e Arte Colonial na Cultura Contemporânea [ArTravel. Travel and Colonial Art in Contemporary Culture], a research project based on the idea that it is necessary to reflect on how the journeying between the former Portuguese colonies and the metropole inspired the creation of an art that took root not only in Portugal but which was also structured in and by the former overseas provinces. Taking as its starting point the growing visibility of the theme at an international level, and with the project incorporated within a framework encapsulated within Contemporary Art History that takes into account the specificities of the national culture, we propose to reflect on the triangle of ‘Travel – Colonial Artistic Creation – Contemporary Culture’ not only from the viewpoint of the European geo-political context but also from perspectives of an authorial world view that allows a change in the paradigm.

The aim is thus to design the Grand Tour of colonial art rethinking the design of creation in the light of a post-modern reflection that goes through the national empire and its return to the port of Europe. In an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary action, there will be an attempt at a globalised approach that may enable lines to be discovered that are tangential to the other colonial empires of the 20th century, integrating them within the contemporary art framework.

Portugal was frequently defined by her overseas colonies and when the Empire was lost, a certain identity was lost too; hence the reason behind rethinking the artistic production of the Portuguese in the world, determining their place in post-colonial society, with the emphasis on a crossed view grounded on a production disseminated throughout various continents (Africa, Asia and America) and with different rhythms.

Centred on the need to create a parallel with the art produced by other European imperial powers, we seek to articulate a relational research that looks at the Portuguese colonial example within a transnational context. A further aim is to try to encompass within a framework and understand colonial artistic production in the overseas coming and going; in other words, to think about and confront the global journeys of overseas art. This means that analysis will be focused on the centre/periphery relationship, on colonial art/indigenous art and on the movement between the two, emphasising the image that each produced in relation to the other. The first and last European colonial empire promoted a cultural-artistic exchange between its overseas possessions and the metropole which led to dialogues and confrontations. These show how hybrid and fruitful this relationship could be, developed in antonymous mirrors in which each needed the other in order to define itself.

What distinguishes this approach is the fact that it proposes to interconnect artistic discourses in the light of the world’s global transnationalism not only in relation to the art produced in a colonial context but also with regard to its influence on both the metropolitan and indigenous culture.

Furthermore, the role of Portugal as the first empire on a global scale provides a solid basis and gives added value, which justifies re-thinking it in the light of the new millennium.

The project also intends to correlate knowledge and know-how with other research centres both in Portugal and abroad in order to promote academic debate and thus contribute to contextualising and spreading knowledge of Portuguese art in the world, thereby opening up new perspectives and helping to design the fragmentary contemporary post-colonial mosaic.

Research done at Centre for the Humanities (CHAM) da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Universidade dos Açores.

The project was completed in February 2021.