Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

O Feitiço do Império: a encenação do universo colonial português nas exposições de 1932, 1934 e 1940

2024; University of Porto; Issue: 17 Linguagem: Inglês

10.21747/2182-1097/cem17a1

2182-9748

Carla Cristina Moreira Ribeiro,

Cultural Identity and Heritage

This article focuses on the Estado Novo in the early 1930s and 1940s. The aim is to examine the Portuguese colonial imaginary, based on the visual narrative developed at three exhibitions: the Great Portuguese Industrial Exhibition of 1932, the First Portuguese Colonial Exhibition in 1934, and the Colonial Section of the Portuguese World Exhibition in 1940. In all cases, the Empire was exhibi-ted in miniaturised form through groups of villages and dwellings characteristic of the different colonies, including indigenous people and specimens of local fauna. These visual communication forms provided a sensual immediacy that allowed access to the general public, inspired by the staging techniques of ethnographic environments that had been established in major exhibitions since the mid-1800s. The purpose is to analyse the expositive scenographic forms used, drawing on the resulting iconographic universe, of a propagandistic nature — mainly magazines and films — seeking to understand the process of cultural objectification to which the Portuguese colonial universe was subjected.