Unheard History?

How does an Indigenous artist convey colonial history through images? In this workshop, participants will use the “see-think-wonder” method to engage with the series of paintings “The Story of White People” by the artist Feliciano Lana (1937-2019). Told from an Indigenous perspective, the series addresses the encounter between white and Indigenous peoples in the context of Brazil’s colonial history. A key focus of the analysis would be on Lana’s work as a medium for decolonial historiography.

In the second part, participants will reflect on their own lifetimes. Which events have shaped the past few years? Whose perspectives have gone “unheard” in media reports or history books? Working in groups, the students will be using collage techniques to create an illustrated timeline in order to shed light on these perspectives.