Sala 35
The photographic series “Room 35” takes place at the Escola Industrial Infante D. Henrique, in the city of Porto, approximately 500m from the place where it originally operated, since 1884, in the old Palácio de Cristal building. It was precisely in 1934, in the year of the First Portuguese Colonial Exhibition that took place in the Jardins do Palácio de Cristal, that the new industrial school was inaugurated in the presence of António de Oliveira Salazar.
In this school we think there was a colonial room, like in several other high schools in the country, dismantled between 1975 and 1990. It is not possible to dissociate colonial history from the history of this school which had, among other missions, to train workers for colonial industries; It is also not possible to dissociate photography from its importance in the processes of dissemination and consolidation of empires. As Barthes said “the same century invented History and Photography”.
Room 35 is, in fact, a common classroom where the colonial books that were in the school library are piled up, and that “are no longer of interest”, as the person responsible for this deposit revealed to us. They are in wooden cabinets at the back of the classroom. The books coexist with the students, only the lockers are open, while the class takes place behind us. There must have been 20 students, more than half were non-white.
The Museum Room is actually room 45, locked. Rarely visited, even by teachers who are unaware of its interior. In this room various objects are stored, from astronomy instruments to old film cameras. On one of the walls, there are colonial objects: spears, scepters, African fabrics, a passe-partout photograph of explorers, the Álbum da Provincia de Moçambique, a flag of Portuguese youth, the school's inaugural book signed by Salazar, among others .
In a school with a large black student population from the PALOP, what is the place of these objects in this space-time dimension?Using my body as a reference, a kind of expanded/plural body, I explore the dichotomy, between presence and absence, in the search for understanding the place of the racialized and post-colonial body when confronted with books and artifacts.
Perhaps it's not just the place, the artifacts, and the books that deserve scrutiny, but also the camera itself. The images show what is outside the field, the intricacies of the photographic process. What is not usually seen is exposed. Is this a permanently incomplete process?
