Body, memory and anticolonial fabulation in Gê Viana’s visual collages

Abstract

The article discusses, based on the notions of speculative fictions by Jota Mombaça and critical fabulation by Saidiya Hartman, the role that the photomontages of the artist Gê Viana have in the elaboration of an anti-colonial critique of the processes of violence against bodies dissidents of race and gender and cultures of native peoples in Brazil. Observing how the artist interferes and adulterates archival images, the hypothesis of the text is that, through these procedures, her images will constitute a fabulation device capable of constructing visual fictions that speculate memories of the future and conjure up the colonial trauma. Through the analysis of some of her main works, it is concluded that the artist's photomontages reprocess the colonial memory and the representations of dissident bodies, repositioning them beyond the trauma.