Daniel Barroca (Lisbon, Portugal, 1976) has been developing his artistic practice through continuous research into the dialectical relationships that images can create between themselves. As a starting point, the photographic archive of the period when his father was a combatant in Guinea-Bissau, between 1972 and 1974, is reconciled with other war archives found by the artist over the years. Through drawing, photography and film, in particular, his field of work is shaped by the idea of collective memory.

In a process that re-signifies the images that make up these archives and pursues an emancipatory vision, Daniel Barroca relocates the theme of war beyond the family and domestic sphere. The trauma and ghostly presences that inhabit the imaginary of the subject are made objects in the construction of narratives and perspectives that contrast with how Portuguese society usually tells this history, questioning its silencing within the public sphere — which, despite being a legacy of the Estado Novo, was maintained after the democratisation process in Portugal.

Victor Bor (1943(?) – 2023), 2024

Three-channel video installation, Full HD, loop

Courtesy of the artist.

In this work commissioned by the Biennial, the artist Daniel Barroca remembers the figure of the healer Victor Bor, whom he met in Guinea-Bissau in 2016 and with whom he kept in touch until almost his death in 2023. Initiated into the Kyangyang prophetic movement in the 1980s, Victor Bor experienced a series of “visions”, including images and sounds, in his dreams and when awake, which enabled him to practise healing and soul reading. During his experiences communicating with other planes, the healer had a dialogue with what could be interpreted as God or the dead. This power also gave rise to the ability to produce written objects, drawings-talismans, which he used in his healing rituals.

The Kyangyang began in newly independent Guinea-Bissau, among the Balanta community, around Ntombikte, a young prophetess who, in 1984, began announcing God’s commandments. As a prophetic movement, it played an important role in rebuilding a socially and politically demoralised and weakened society after the War of Independence — despite later suffering violent state repression. Creators of a rich visual culture, the movement and its founder, Ntombikte, produced a vast series of drawings, some of which are part of one of the projections in Daniel Barroca’s video installation.