It has been almost a decade since Camões Berlin opened its Cultural Centre – a venue for promoting Portuguese arts in the heart of the German capital. On this occasion, it was only fitting that the Institute’s premises should host a retrospective exhibition, something self-referential, as a way of celebrating the work done. We’ll be right back is the second exhibition curated by Guilherme Vilhena Martins for the institution, as well as the last before it moves to the Schöneberg area, in the neighbouring company of galleries such as KOW, Heidi and Molitor. Drawing on the track record of creators who have been at the Centre over the last ten years, 13 works by eight artists were chosen – all Portuguese who are or have been resident in Germany. All together, they represent a small sample of what contemporary art trends in Portugal could be, while at the same time offering a review of what it means to be fundamentally Portuguese, both inside and outside one’s home country.

I may not yet be Portuguese enough to formulate a reflection from within – one is not born, but becomes Portuguese. Interestingly enough, however, the first entry of the diary I tried to compile when I arrived here in February 2019 (admittedly without the intent to stay, and with the naïve eyes – which sometimes still haunt me – of someone who sees Portugal as the epitome of an idyllic Europeanness), showed I already felt that national saudosismo. I wrote at the time: ‘at the root of all that is beautiful, lies the melancholy of what is so very old’. Soon afterwards, I underlined some phrases from the poem ‘Nota sobre o fogo’ in Rita Isadora Pessoa’s book a vida nos vulcões: ‘tonight I become old in the world (…) / tonight nothing is lost’[1]. In hindsight, I thought I was experiencing, for the first time, a place that treasured its own history, that preserved the centuries-old memory of its streets and monuments – in short, that recognised the importance of this ongoing movement into the past. Back where I came from, on the other side of the Atlantic, the order is the progress; a future that overwhelms identities, decimates historical heritage, ploughs up hillsides, bulldozes houses and grants amnesty to dictators.

However, I’m writing this now, after five years as a resident – two as a citizen – under the shadow of the recent news of Odair Moniz’s murder and nights of brutal police violence in the Zambujal neighbourhood. Before long, I learnt that, whether in Brazil or Portugal, memory politics lead to the always partial, always discriminatory obliteration of everything that does not fit into today’s idea of a country. To belong to the past is a privilege – so is to belong to the present. Belonging, in a word; on both sides of the border, even if the roots are loosening or moving. ‘They have forgotten that there is nothing lonelier than forgetting,’ Rita de Matos tells us, as she unveils the Arab origins of the word (and perhaps the suffering of) saudade in Das Saudades Sem Dono (2022). ‘Suad’, ‘saudá’ and ‘suaidá’, terms for the complex black bile that has been ravaging us for as long as there has been a human being and a memory, were found in an alphabet other than ours many, many centuries ago.

The reasons for choosing this sentiment as a source of pride in Portugal could be listed here – many have already done so. Nevertheless, I’m actually interested in thinking about the consequences of such a choice when it comes to the portrayal of a being essentially separate: in time, in distance, from oneself, from others. In Brazil, while we also understand absence and are fond of the poetry of ‘saudade’, I believe it would not be entirely wrong to assume that we aim our national pride to the exact opposite quality – we are the ‘mixed people’, the melting pot of many cultures, creeds and colours in union (an idea which, of course, creates its own social complications). Rita de Matos, like Márcio Carvalho – presenting in We’ll be right back three pieces from the series The Era of Involuntary Memory made in 2016 and 2018 – and many other Portuguese artists born after the Carnation Revolution, openly works on the social dynamics of memory and exclusion that shape a lonely country (or one that imagines itself that way). Sofia Seidi’s representations also display a certain void, as she paints moments of familiarity and discomfort in a kind of magical, distant and melancholic realism.

Guilherme Vilhena Martins, the curator of this exhibition, said it was important to highlight two distinct artistic paths – abstraction and figuration -, which possibly represent the two faces of separation – leaving and returning. Aires de Gameiro, André Santos Martins, Carolina Serrano, Jorge Lopes, Teresa Murta and the other three artists previously mentioned all share a common condition: at some stage, they opted to have the courage to either go or stay. In either case, I believe there really is no escape or return: ‘history becomes biography, and vice versa’, the curator writes on the exhibition text, in reference to Mónica de Miranda’s work. As in Staircases (2022), André Santos Martins’ looped video, a nationality – a nation – is perhaps this ever-changing space, “between” the outside and the inside, the real and the virtual, consisting of multiple layers (geographical, generational, symbolic) and constantly morphing, although, deep down, it always looks the same. The staircase is eternal; the point of arrival is always deferred; the origin is always further away, always manifold. Therefore, to become Portuguese, you have to make room for nostalgia as much as revolution, tears as much as colour, home as much as travel, Os Lusíadas / The Lusiads as much as Plantation Memories: Episodes of Everyday Racism. All that was and continues to be, and all that is and must be something else.

We’ll be right back. But nothing will ever be the same. And still nothing is lost.

The exhibition is on show at the Kunstraum Botschaft / Camões Institut Berlin until October 31.

[1] Pessoa, Rita Isadora. (2016). “Nota sobre o fogo”. In: a vida nos vulcões. Oito e Meio.