FBP (Lisabon) /2022/

Project reflecting the past hidden in a neat industrial spaces. Industrial architecture inspires me a lot and also my studio in Prague is located in a former factory building in the historical industrial district.

At first Pragovka was an exhibition factory for cars, then it was used for the massive production of tanks and planes for the German army during the Second World War. Spaces with a rich and layered history always provide interesting stimuli, and I feel similarly about Fábrica do Braço de Prata whose history I went through a bit. The production of armaments and the export of weapons to the whole world. All of which was compounded by the fact that Portugal was a neutral country during the Second World War. A deeper dive into the factory’s history led me to discover that the factory supplied arms mainly to the colonial wars.
I decided to visualize these reports in the form of large-scale drawings.
The drawings are collages of events that affected the colonized territories and the colonizers. Events past and present. The conquest and subjugation of paradise that changed not only the landscape but also the expressions on the faces of the indigenous people. In each of the drawings, a distinctive face is in the foreground and the background is made up of reproductions and drawings of military equipment and industry, wartime scenery and scenes from the daily lives of soldiers and civilians.
Everything is interwoven and layered like a film that has no end. The partial transparency of the face lets through the bitter images of the past and present in the minds of the oppressed and the oppressors.

Every touch leaves a memory, every blow leaves pain, every invasion leaves a void, every thought carries its consequences.