Volume ArTravel IX (for sale)

Viagem a Zanzibar | Journey to Zanzibar. 1906 Francisco Afonso Chaves
Coord.: Maria João Castro
Publisher: ArTravel
Sponsorship: CHAM
Collection: ArTravel
Year: 2024
ISBN: 978-989-53054-4-5


This book is an album of photographs accompanied by texts by Maria João Castro, João Paulo Oliveira e Costa, Abdul Sheriff and Farouk Topan that describe and contextualize Francisco Afonso Chaves’ wanderings through part of colonial Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. His stereoscopic photographs take a close look at Portugal’s former overseas geography and provide an almost anthropological view of everyday life in the Old City. The album also reproduces daily life in period coloured images that complement the colonial atmosphere of this Indian Ocean island.

Bilingual edition


Jornal "Observador"
Agenda Cultural FNAC: "Book Talks"

Volume ArTravel VIII (for sale)

A Journey to the 1920s. The diaphanous glitter of extravagance
Author: Maria João Castro
Publisher: ArTravel
Sponsorship: CHAM
Collection: ArTravel
Year: 2023
ISBN: 978-989-53054-3-8


The Roaring Twenties, Les Années Folles or Os Loucos Anos Vinte evoke the memory of a splendid evanescent decade that was defined by a unique artistic-cultural effervescence. The modernity and cosmopolitanism that emerged from postwar Paris spread throughout the western world and became enshrined through an elite who danced frenetically and euphorically, until this was interrupted by the Great Depression which brought this ephemeral and spectacular period to an end.
Preface by Nuno Júdice

Bilingual edition


Prize António Quadros, Contemporary History 2024
Fundação António Quadros (newsletter)
Fundação António Quadros
Prize delivery
E-Cultura
Notícia do Sorraia
Mais Ribatejo
O Mirante


Prize awarded by Academia Portuguesa da História 2023
Academia Portuguesa da História
Newspaper "O Expresso"
Newspaper "Público"
Newspaper "Correio do Minho"
Radio "Antena do Minho"

Volume ArTravel VII (for sale)

Contemporary Colonial Painting. From de Solitude of the Metropole to a Horizon of Possibilities
Author: Maria João Castro
Publisher: ArTravel
Sponsorship: CHAM
Collection: ArTravel
Year: 2021
ISBN: 978-989-53054-1-4


The purpose of this book is to study the relation between Portuguese colonial art, especially painting, and political power in the contemporary context. The subtlety of suggestions and the complexity of relations that stem from the power of art and the art of power mean that the history of colonial art’s journey is not a univocal narrative but a series of heterogeneous and inter relational products that emerged in multifarious ways from the metropole and also the overseas possessions. Hence Pintura Colonial Contemporânea [Contemporary Colonial Painting] sets out Da Solidão da Metrópole a um Horizonte de Possibilidades [From the Solitude of the Metropole to a Horizon of Possibilities] in the context of the colonial coming and going within a hybrid genealogy formed and developed in antonymic mirrors in which art and travel each needed the other in order to define themselves.
Preface by João Paulo Oliveira e Costa.

Bilingual edition

Volume ArTravel VI (published)

Fragmentos da Viagem na Obra de Julião Sarmento
Coord.: Maria João Castro
Publisher: ArTravel
Sponsorship: CHAM
Collection: ArTravel
Year: 2020
ISBN: 978-989-53054-1-4

Julião Sarmento’s plastic work has come to define itself from various points of reality, fragments, that constitute coordinates of a worldview in constant movement, on a journey. In this sense, his work reflects a multifaceted authorial path that interweaves gazes in a dynamic of indisputable contemporaneity. From a reflection based on the dual relationship between Art and Travel, the book is presented as a proposed transversal reading of Julião Sarmento’s artistic creation and brings together a collection of essays by different experts with different perspectives that converge to provide a deeply current, plural gaze.
Texts by Raquel Henriques da Silva, Alda Costa, Maria João Castro, Alexandre Melo, Cristina Azevedo Tavares, Emília Ferreira, Isabel Nogueira, João Pinharanda, José Luís Porfírio and interview by Vanessa Rato.

Volume ArTravel V (published)

Empire and Tourism. An Anthology of Essays
Coord.: Maria João Castro
Publisher: ArTravel
Sponsorship: CHAM
Collection: ArTravel
Year: 2019
ISBN: 978-989-99719-2-9

Empire & Tourism is based on the idea that it is necessary to reflect on how the journeying between the metropole and the former colonies inspired the growth of colonial tourism which developed in multiple different strands. The ‘age of empires’ closely overlaps the dramatic development of tourism from a largely European phenomenon to a global one. 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 Tourism – Culture, not only from the viewpoint of the European geo-political context but also from perspectives of an authorial world view.

Multilingual edition

Abstracts & Bio

Volume ArTravel IV (on bookstores)

Art and Travel (Post-)Colonial in the Work of de José de Guimarães
Coord.: Maria João Castro
Publisher: Caleidoscópio
Sponsorship: FCT
Collection: ArTravel
Year: 2018
ISBN: 978-989-658-510-5

The anthology was based on the conference The Interweaving of Art and (Post-) Colonial Travel in the Work of José de Guimarães held on 12 April 2018 at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. It includes the papers given by José-Augusto França, Eduardo Lourenço, Cláudia Ribeiro, Cristina Azevedo Tavares, Emília Ferreira, Jorge Silva Melo, Maria João Castro, Nuno Faria, Nuno Júdice, Ramon Sarró, Raquel Henriques da Silva and José de Guimarães as well as reproductions of the works mentioned.
Preface by José-Augusto França

Multilingual edition

Volume ArTravel III (published)

Empire and Colonial Art. An Anthology of Essays.
Coord.: Maria João Castro
Publisher by ArTravel
Sponsorship: CHAM-FCT
Collection: ArTravel
Year: 2017
ISBN: 978-989-99719-1-2

The Anthology of Essays is a product of the Empire and Colonial Art International Conference that took place on 6 and 7 April 2017 with the sponsorship of CHAM. This event included various forms and modalities of representation and brought into dialogue the different subjects considered. The essays are contextualised by a short text and a few lines of interpretation to help the reader navigate through the documents and new projects presented. They serve to develop new studies of an inter- or multi-disciplinary, transnational nature, interweaving different methodologies and sources (History, Ethnography and Anthropology, Literature, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Archaeology, Heritage Studies, Political Science and Visual Culture) – hence their interest not only as an instrument of dissemination, but also as a useful resource for advanced scientific research.

Multilingual edition

Abstracts & Bio

Volume ArTravel II (on bookstores)

Zanzibar. Art of a (Re) Encounter
Author: Maria João Castro
Publisher: Caleidoscópio
Collection: ArTravel
Year: 2019
ISBN: 978-989-658-599-0

Zanzibar. Art of a (Re)encounter proposes a (re)encounter that recovers the genealogy of a story begun 500 years ago between the pearl of the Indian Ocean and Portugal, but this time focusing on the Portuguese artistic-cultural heritage in Zanzibar. The book seeks to combine the rigour of historical research with a certain poetic lightness, reaching out to a public beyond the academic community who are interested in the Portuguese legacy in this globalised world of which we were co-founders.
Preface by Abdul Sheriff and Eduardo Lourenço

Jornal de Letras

Volume ArTravel I (published)

(Post-) Colonial Thought and Writings
Coord.: Maria João Castro
Publisher: ArTravel - CHAM/Húmus
Sponsorship: CHAM-FCT
Collection: ArTravel
Year: 2017
ISBN: 978-989-658-374-3

The book is the result of the public Conference (Post) Colonial Thought and Writings that took place on April 20, 2016 in FCSH-UNL, and contains the texts of Adriano Moreira, Eduardo Lourenço, Helder Macedo and José Augusto França.

Bilingual edition

Jornal de Letras
Jornal "Observador"