Isabelle Ferreira
Notre Feu

Recently, Portugal’s new “social democratic” government, ruling in an alliance with the far-right party, has been focusing its policies and discourse around the “dangers” of immigration. Ironically, this stance comes from the same party that in 2011, governing under Troika directives, urged Portuguese workers to emigrate, predicting that its policies would worsen the country’s conditions. Therefore, bringing the Portuguese migratory diaspora to the centre of the public discourse is now, maybe more than ever, an urgent and fundamental gesture.

That’s exactly what Isabelle Ferreira has done in Notre Feu, her first solo exhibition in Portugal, the country her father left in the 1960s, fleeing the dictatorship and the colonial war. He, like many others, embarked on an arduous clandestine journey (known as “the leap”) through Spain, the Basque Country, and the Pyrenees to France. During these crossings, a torn photograph served as a lifeline: families kept one half of a portrait of the one who was taking the leap over the Pyrenees, receiving the other half only upon their loved one’s safe arrival in France.