Sketch for a museum is a round of interviews to expand on the growing reference to colonial and post-colonial issues on the Portuguese art scene in recent years. The primary purpose is to stimulate dialogue between a series of artistic practices and initiatives that have claimed an appropriate forum for this discussion, highlighting an institutional void at a cultural and artistic level. For this third interview, Guilherme Vilhena Martins speaks to Melissa Rodrigues (Cape Verde, 1985), a curator, art educator and performer.
A graduate in Anthropology, and a member of the cross-disciplinary research group InterStruct Collective, she is also on the programming board of Porto’s RAMPA cultural association and is a permanent member of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art’s Education Department. As a researcher in Anthropology and Performance, she has developed studies in Visual Culture, Image and Representation, having co-created and presented in June 2017 the collective performance cabelo, with the black feminist collective Chá das Pretas and, in the same year, devised the performance-conference do submisso ao político – o lugar do corpo negro na cultura visual. Melissa is also an anti-racist militant and a founding member of Narp – Núcleo Anti-Racista do Porto (an anti-racist collective headquartered in Porto).

GVM: You have studied anthropology and you are an artist, curator and educator. How did this trajectory unfold? How did you go from performing arts to anthropology and then on to programming?

MR: The connection between all of these fields is fairly organic and flexible, which is of greater interest to me than the individual disciplines per se. I’m attracted to the chance of openness. Performing arts and especially dance emerged out of fascination. And anthropology arose from my need to enrol in university and my context, the people I knew at the time, in particular the mother of a friend of mine who was an anthropologist, a field I had never heard of before.

It was highly contextual. I was keen to find out more about and study different cultures. I was genuinely curious to better understand the culture I lived in and the other ones too. As a young person, I had this fascination with learning about various cultures and reflecting on the world. It is my belief that the thing I keep doing is reflecting on and from the world, even if this approach has turned out to be a disappointment.

GVM: How so?

MR: It was not what I expected it to be. But this was also extremely significant in terms of thinking, of getting in touch with certain authors and other ways of seeing the world. While anthropology was a letdown and made me question myself frequently and consider giving up, it made me very tenacious, and brought me the opportunity to see things from other viewpoints, the opportunity to come into contact with many different texts. Those that, looking back, were also formative and meaningful for me.

GVM: Do you think that this disappointment was also instrumental in you moving into curating, for instance?

MR: Totally. I reckon that it was even more important than the shift to programming or curating, or even my artistic practice, which began earlier, because, as you say, that disappointment pushed me to be in the world more practically… Throughout this whole experience, I was already in the activist circles, I already knew a good chunk of people.

Activism has always been an integral part of my life and my practice. I got started in my teens by joining a youth organisation. Obviously, this was also very important – being part of this movement with other youths was essential for structuring a more political and critical mindset. My anthropology degree helped make me more pragmatic, more territorial, in order to bring about change. A less abstract change. And that led me to my artistic endeavours, which are centres of political reflection and political art.

And political art connected directly with activism, with that allure I just mentioned for formative areas, particularly dance, but which I also had for theatre too. It all started at school, in amateur theatre, on the fringes of Lisbon, between Queluz and Massamá, Queluz/Monte Abraão and Massamá, the places where I used to wander around. There, at high school, I came into contact with amateur theatre and the performing arts. I took up dance at that time and that was also when I had my first brush with anthropology.

GVM: How do you see this course now and the role of chance in bringing you to places where it might have been more difficult to get to? I’m recalling an article I read recently where you said that, in Mem Martins, one of Portugal’s most populous towns, there are no theatres. Sometimes we are left to chance or to our own resources, and a sort of enclosure is put up around these venues, especially in the cultural sphere. How do you see this reliance on luck today?

MR: I honestly don’t know if I believe in happenstance. I believe there are different answers. But I can give you an answer from a social perspective, so to speak, where there is no such thing as chance. We do not live in isolation in society and I’m very much into thinking collectively and considering that the reason I’m where I am now and have followed this path has to do with many other individuals who have come before me, who have walked with me and who, more closely or less directly, are instrumental in this journey: female teachers, male teachers, people who have been hugely impactful within the education system. I can also talk about my father, my mother, relatives, entirely random people who were also essential, such as the mother of my anthropologist friend, who was absent from my background.

In that particular setting, at Amadora’s party youth centre, I met this person whose mother was an anthropologist and with whom, as a 17-year-old teenager, I had several interesting exchange and sharing moments. In other words, all the people we meet, the way they move us and the moments we share can truly shape our lives. All of that is important and very much shapes my path and my practice. On top of the spiritual aspect, there is also the whole question of the struggle, the struggle of the black movement, i.e, many people before me have trodden different pathways to allow me to take this path now.

GVM: Indeed. Actually, the networking factor is central. I was asking more along these lines about chance, because, as I see it, the need to establish these structures is also a response to the reality that many peripheral communities are left to themselves, in the sense that there are no infrastructure facilities. Chance, on the social front, is extremely precious, but chance works both ways and very often we end up not reaching these places because we are left to our own luck. Based on this, what do you believe is the value of developing infrastructure in areas with highly fragile facilities from the point of view of availability? What is the role of education? I was reading a text of yours some time ago about the work of Henrique Paris, where you spoke not only about his practice, of collectives like Unidigrazz or Fonte, but also about working in the interests of a network, of trying to build space and also of doing educational work, which is artistic, but as a means.

MR: Right, right. The only possible answer as far as I’m concerned is that, when there is none, we must create it. Anything that does not already exist must be made. I grew up quite a lot like this, within different contexts, not just on the outskirts, but in other places – for example, when I lived in Porto for eight years. If it does not exist, then we have to create it. We must create our networks, our structures. We must create oxygen bubbles, spaces for survival on a cultural, social and political scale. Within the suburb context where I grew up, I did not create, but I joined what was already there, which is also incredibly important.

We frequently think we are creating something new, but this already exists. We think we are doing something extremely different and someone next door is doing a similar project. This may not be all that positive, because we are splitting energies when we could be bringing them together. It is pointless to generate numerous micro-bubbles when the most powerful thing is to gather these bubbles to do something bigger. There was a space in the periphery where I grew up: the party youth, a young community, with other people my age or a little older, who were nonconformist, who were also critical thinkers and had an overwhelming desire to change the world, which is what I was after, to carry out the revolution. And it is vital in adolescence, whether in the peripheries or outside them, to get in touch with other like-minded people.

GVM: Do you think that this is a defining moment?

MR: I do. At various levels, we’re creating our identity, and we need to find a place where we belong. And for a girl, a young Cape Verdean girl growing up in Portugal, finding places to belong was particularly difficult. It is difficult to find comfortable places in a racist society. Not that they were not there. But I wanted different ones. I wanted places I could identify with, beyond the family, the trusted environment, the safe culture, which is family and friends.

The youth party scene was extremely powerful for finding like-minded people, creating places to belong, not racially, but in thinking terms. Later on, I moved to Queluz and Rio de Mouro. I met people in all these places, got in touch with local collectives, joined in whatever was being done and did other things with people who also wished to create, who also aspired to reason. I was involved with youth parties outside of school, which allowed me to get a sense of what it was like, for example, to set up assemblies, demonstrations, to take my classmates by train to Marquês de Pombal in Lisbon to demonstrate, to go to the assembly.

If I think back to the Sintra Line almost 10 years ago, I reckon that all the spaces and networks I was involved in were already in operation. Instead, I worked to develop greater articulation and to bring different artistic or political interests together. I never really created anything new; all I did was connect the dots, so to speak, and I believe my practice has to do with that. I’m not making anything new, I’m just putting dots and lines back together. The same goes for my curatorial practice, my programming. I’m not creating new things: rather, it is looking around me with a more profound perspective, one that considers how I can join things up, how I can really make connections. I’m keen to connect people, spaces and ideas. And educationally, because this is all about education for me, it’s all about educational curation, in a way.

For me, this all stems from a place, that naive position where we believe we can change the world. It springs from that inner belief that we really can do things differently and that our actions can have consequences. And this is something I have believed since I was a teenager: my actions, not as an individual, but as a network, really can make a huge difference. This political and collective mindset comes from what I learned at home, from what my father passed on to me. To be in relationship with one another so as to be able to endeavour to change things. All right, I don’t know if I got too far off track. However, for me, this has everything to do with education and thinking about and from education.

GVM: And how did you get into education?

MR: I started off working in education exactly because there was a certain point in my life, after my party youth days, when I also became slightly disenchanted with anthropology. I felt a bit underwhelmed and wondered to myself: how can I really try to change things? How can I really help to make a difference, even if only a small amount? Education was it for me. You need to be in the educational environment, with children, with people, in thinking spaces. It is about creating change and, for me, the foundation as a germinating place is education. Formal or non-formal.

This communication vehicle is also key to connecting the public with the institution, as I think that there would otherwise be even more hurdles to what is being done within the institutional setting. How will the public gain access to that space and how will the public understand it? Educational projects, mediation initiatives in cultural spaces, but also in other spaces, and the ability to spread science, for example, are essential. If something is being done without any communication, how will the public ever understand it? How can we also have any confidence in these institutions, feel that this is our place, that we can step into it and that we will be accepted and listened to and that our subjectivity will be grasped?

In my opinion, such is the role of educational services and educational projects: to accept different audiences and communicate exactly what is going on, whether it is art or anything else, to inform these audiences about what that space is, what is going on, which works are there, what research is being done and how this is related to people’s everyday lives, how stepping into a contemporary art museum can be transformative, how entering into contact with a certain artist or a certain work can really bring about change, raise other questions for that individual.

I do believe that educational projects are key and that investment is needed. When investment is lacking, problems abound. The concept of seeing educational and mediation projects is lovely, but in reality there is much to be done. First of all, it is important that these are not unstable services. Respect for what is happening is important. I see that in my contact with Brazil. There is great respect for the educational service, for example at the São Paulo Biennial, at the Mercosur Biennial. There is the notion that this is as important as the project being developed by the curators. Both elements work together. This is very significant, because they must communicate.

Essentially, an educator or art educator is also a curator, right? They are also curating a project and are doing it for a specific audience, whereas the curator is also curating at a specific time, thinking about a specific idea, with a particular concept. This is all about thinking, research and advance work in order to communicate to the audience. Basically, the Portuguese context is missing this: respect for the work undertaken by educational projects, which is highly precarious and very much seen as entertainment.

GVM: Do you believe that educational services are relegated to the background in Portugal?

MR: There are extremely important structures and museums in Portugal that have this thinking. This is lack of respect or lack of care, is it not? We must recognise that educational projects have a major part to play in communication, in passing on the philosophy of that space, work or exhibition to the audience. This is all about education, both formal and non-formal, ways of educating and ways of encouraging us to think.

A further important point also relates to who we are hiring, right? We may even have a very significant educational service and challenging projects, and be ahead of the curve when it comes to working with a challenging, disruptive, diverse concept, but, practically speaking, the curators, the educational service staff, tend to be white, for example, or cis. So, where is the transformation, the change?

We must be careful, we must realise that it is not just about talking about a certain subject, we need to think about who is allowed to talk about a certain subject. Portugal has a major shortcoming in this respect. We have programme curators and then we also have people who work on the field, right? Those who work directly with the public, that is, mediation and educational projects. We can even have several dissenting artists, those who are sexual, gendered, racialised or immigrant, but if the curatorship or the educational project are led by certain people, the discourse and communication are compromised. That has been my experience.

I may even have black artists, but, if the mediation and educational services team is white, if the curatorial team and the whole museum staff, the team at a particular gallery space is white, there will be issues, there will be problems. Often there is no in-depth analysis of the themes that are being worked on. However much research is done, subjectivity is lacking, understanding is lacking.

And this level of understanding is often absent. There are other issues here too, but, for me, they are related and highly representative of the artistic milieu. It can be a more welcoming, diverse way of thinking… And then there are all these words, right? Diversity, integration, and so on. Awful words to throw around. But this whole discourse has arrived in Portugal too late. We must keep up with this trend and we must shake up the structure a little, as the structure has not been rocked at all. Now, yes, there are more institutions dealing with certain subjects than before, more people involved with certain audiences and demographic, social and territorial contexts, if you will, but changes are not taking hold.

GVM: And how can we think about education departments, or the education component, on the same level not only as curatorship, but also as artistic output? How do you see the future of this dynamic within an institutional framework, which, as you pointed out, is often a hegemonic arena that excludes non-existent narratives?

MR: If the problem is structural, then we must burn the structure, we must reshape it, don’t we? That is the big problem. How are we going to reshape the structure if the privilege of many is not even at stake, is not even being asked about? We can scrutinise inequality, unequal opportunities, racism, but this process of analysing structures and institutions is always conducted as if it were the others, right? Society is racist because of those people, society is unequal because of those things, society is sexist because of other things… No. Institutions and structures are all part of, form part of, benefit from this inequality, this fabric. This is extremely problematic. The only way would be to really destructure the structure, which is why the metaphor of burning is used.

This is very, very difficult. But there is also something else which is really important and which I see happening, for instance in the example you were discussing of Unidigrazz and other collectives who are finding their feet on the fringes of Lisbon and who want to be in those arenas and not in the city centre, who want to occupy the peripheral environs. Non-centre places. This is a turning point, right? There has been a turning point, which, for me, is very much to do with the generational shift in thinking. Whereas my generation and those before me had a need to occupy the centre, to have structures in the city centre, which we still do not have.

We still do not have black structures, so-called black artistic structures, galleries and everything else, in the city centre. Something is starting to emerge, but as yet it is not representative and is more tied to other diasporas than the African one in Portugal’s colonised countries. It would be extremely important if it could come from the different African diasporas, sadly the one I come from still lacks this kind of representation of artistic spaces in the city centre.

But this decentralisation and this journey back to the periphery is extremely important, to stick around and avoid the need for validation. This is the major difference for me: not needing to be in the centre for validation. There is also something incredibly pivotal in turning the tables, an attitude of ‘if you want to see the art we are producing, you have to come to our territory’. This is a transformation. I consider it very important, one of the most momentous things happening in Lisbon’s artistic context, especially in the visual arts.

And there are also young artists, of a generation younger than mine, who are not interested in institutions, in being part of them, or in working in this or that gallery, working with this or that curator, working from a white perspective. They do not have to feed the ego and the white outlook. They do not have to feed the white desire, the white fetish of institutions or individuals. This way they can concentrate, focus on what they really want to talk about. Unidigrazz and many other collectives and young artists are doing it. There has been a shift, a refocusing, I believe, towards a black gaze, a black outlook that allows them to speak from their own subjectivities, their own experiences, their own realities.

That, to me, is the big shift. On the subject of institutions, I think my generation still wants to have a place at the institutional table, let’s put it that way. But I think we want more and more to set up our own tables, our own spaces. I therefore believe that institutions and structures that cannot reconsider, question and renew themselves will end up lagging behind.

GVM: Yes, it also seems to me that it points to a greater hybridity of roles.

MR: Regarding the subject of education, I honestly feel that there is a role that still does not exist in Portugal, but that is present in Brazil and in other contexts, of an artist who is a curator, and an educator who is a curator. It involves this greater hybridity between different areas and not seeing curatorship as the pinnacle of contemporary art and putting curators on a pedestal, but viewing it as a form of education, as an affective look at something, an exhibition, an artist, a work, a context.

I always want to follow up the person I’m working with as a curator, the person I’m working with in that context, not just organise an exhibition and put it on show. There is all this prior work of talking, sharing, referencing, everything that could happen, right? For me, this also has to do with my experience as an art educator. To think about education is to think about curating, to think about how you reach a certain audience, how you approach a certain question or concept… How do we transform something abstract into an intelligible thing for various audiences that is at the same time sensitive and sensory? It seems to me that this cuts across curating, education and thinking, does it not? How do we translate this into something sensitive, sensorial and at the same time questioning and challenging?

GVM: I have one more brief question, regarding the idea that the centre is dying out, the idea of taking one’s place, of trying to bolster a peripheral spot as equally valid, not as a non-centre, but as a centre in its own right. There is always this question of ‘it’s important to build networks, it’s important to establish platforms’. But how? Where do the funds come from? I reckon that an interesting aspect of projects like Unidigrazz is that they ask for funds from institutions which, regrettably, are not usually considered to be the mainstay of culture, but which play a fundamental role in funding. In their case, there is this shift towards appealing for material resources not to cultural institutions, but to bodies such as the parish council or the town hall. To claim these resources which, at the end of the day, belong to the people and the places. If the idea is to go local, do you think it would make sense to start there?

MR: Yes, totally. We are now discussing demographic racism. This is why I greatly admire this younger generation. They have greater creativity and also, from my perspective, less time to waste, less fear. They are more straightforward. This is important. I think my generation is still bargaining… still looking to take the place of the institution, the city centre…

However, this more strategic thinking on the part of this young generation and Afro-Portuguese and Afro-descendant artists living in Portugal, and black Portuguese living in Portugal, will surely bring about a different sort of change. I cannot say that it is ‘the’ change because it does not happen overnight. A lot of work was done a long time ago so that these generations could now also claim and negotiate in this way, right? But I very much believe in this generation.

I’m an optimist and so I believe that this is a good way of bargaining and a good way of not depending on cultural institutions for funding, as there are other questions: who are they going to fund? What sort of work are they going to fund? This is truly a conundrum. We never change. And then everyone speaks of inequality and not having access. Let’s actually talk about the inequality of inequality, the periphery of the periphery, about those who cannot even have their application objectively considered. So there we have it… There are many issues at play.