an audiovisual installation upcoming
In 2021, when I first arrived in Goa to start a one-year internship at the Portuguese Consulate, I started recording the narratives of Goans who had lived under Portuguese colonial rule. My aim was to document and understand how this generation - now in their 80s and 90s - experienced everyday life: how they went to school, what they studied, what they ate, or how they spent their free time. Yet, as my research progressed, I began questioning the very premise of my work. It started to feel futile, perhaps even colonial in itself, as though I were unconsciously driven by what Bissell calls an “unacknowledged nostalgia,” the tendency within anthropology to “rescue whole worlds from the ravages of time, to make sense of social forms fast fading away.” Over time, as I immersed myself more deeply in anthropology, my approach evolved.
The result of this journey was the master’s thesis, L(ea)iving the Past: Nostalgia, Space, and Writing as Remembering Practices among Goan Catholics, which now serves as the foundation for this upcoming installation. In this project, I explore the contemporary manifestations of colonial memory in Goa, particularly among its shrinking Catholic community. My decision to translate this research into an audiovisual installation stems from two motivations. First, during both my stays in India, I collected an extensive archive of footage capturing the daily lives of Goans - material that would be a shame to leave buried on a hard drive. Second, I am committed to making anthropological knowledge accessible beyond the confines of academia, allowing people to engage with it in ways unrestricted by academic norms.
L(ea)iving the Past is organised around an attempt to collectively reflect on the decolonisation of the Portuguese past, using the installation itself as a premise for this questioning — What role does this research play in the decolonisation of the colonial narrative? Moreover, in line with Orhan Pamuk’s thinking in the construction of his fictional museum, where he writes that “the ordinary, everyday stories are richer, more humane, and much more joyful,” L(ea)iving the Past seeks to be a celebration of the everyday and of the memories of this community that are mirrored within it, while also reflecting on the deep bonds that connect their memories to my own.
Funded by Fundação Oriente, L(ea)iving the Past is scheduled to be presented in November 2025 at Casa do Comum, Lisbon.
Portraits of everyday life in Goa. Stills from videos by the author.
references
Bissel, William Cunningham. 2005. “Engaging Colonial Nostalgia.” Cultural Anthropology 20, no. 2 (May): 215-248.
Pamuk, Orhan. “Manifesto” The Museum of Innocence. Accessed April 20, 2025. https://www.masumiyetmuzesi.org/en/mani-festo.