Taking as a starting point the exhibition La Neblina, by Runo Lagomarsino, the historian Afonso Dias Ramos talks with the curator Filipa Oliveira about how art, and Lagomarsino’s work, contributes to a decolonisation of visual culture and a new reading of history, in particular the legacy of Christopher Columbus.
Afonso Dias Ramos is a post-doctoral researcher at the Transregional Forum Studien in Berlin (2018-19), where he is developing a project on the current controversies about the decolonisation of visual culture inside and outside the museum. He completed his MA and PhD in Art History at University College London, with a thesis on the relationship between political violence and photography in contemporary art, exploring the recent artistic legacy of the wars in Angola (1961-2002). He worked at the Modern Art Centre of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and studied History of Art at the New University of Lisbon and Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). Recent publications include the articles ‘Rarely penetrated by camera or film’ – NBC’s Angola: Journey to War (1961)’ (2017), ‘Photography and Propaganda in the Late Portuguese Empire: Volkmar Wentzel’s Assignments for National Geographic Magazine’ (2017), ‘Kongo Reframed’ (2017), ‘How to Disappear Completely – The Struggle for Angola’ (2017) and ‘Filipe II also had the name Discoveries used’ (2018).