Conceived to accompany Délio Jasse’s solo exhibition The Colonies will be Countries, presented at Pavilhão Branco, this publication delves into the core of different themes that run across his body of work, such as gaze politics, the exploitation and appropriation of the archive, (post-)colonialism and (post-)memory, through essays by Gisela Casimiro, Sara Antónia Matos, Pedro Faro and curator Marta Jecu. The catalogue also includes images of all the displayed works, and of how they inhabited the exhibition space.
“Délio Jasse’s work engenders a criticism of the past and is a trigger for a disquieting reflection on the present. In line with other artistic and theoretical reflections on the subject of post-colonialism, and sharing the geographical, historical, and identity constraints inherent to it, Délio Jasse elaborates a discourse on the perenniality of memory in a deeply divided present.”
– Sara Antónia Matos & Pedro Faro
“Délio Jasse’s strategy of reparation is to shift attention from specific situations of injustice to the codes, stereotypes, prejudices, and power relations that underlie colonial relations and that have been the tools of these processes of victimization in an everyday environment.”
– Marta Jecu
“Délio Jasse works with what he calls ‘post-memory’, which for him represents ‘a memory that has come to life’ and is confronting itself… In this sense, he also comments on the fact that he is not at all interested in showing particular stories, life stories, experienced by the colonizers, but rather in drawing (through this accumulation of images) the story of collective representations linked to the colonial politics of the visible.”
– Gisela Casimiro