Portraits After A War
It's seven in the morning, on one of those days of scorching sun. The archaeologists lazily get up and have breakfast, dipping their toast in bowls full of coffee with milk. In one hour, they are all in the field. Someone pulls a hoe, another is responsible for cleaning and disposing the dirt, and in the background, someone cautions about the backhoe. This is a common routine on archaeological sites around the world during the summer months.
But this is not just any place. The archaeologists are in the Aragonese village of Belchite, where women and men are excavating military latrines, a fort, and a line of trenches built by the Francoist troops during the Spanish civil war. These are the material testimonies of a brutal battle that took place in the summer of 1937, in which the Republican forces confronted and won over the rebel army.
Belchite was partially destroyed during the battle and, after the war, Franco wanted it to become a perpetual example of "red barbarism". He forced the residents to abandon their homes and ordered a new village to be built nearby as a symbol of penance and reconciliation. But that idealized world only remains in the postcards that are sold in the tobacconist of the new town.
In his film Songs for After a War (1971), Basilio Martín Patino showed how the life of Spaniards became a pastiche of contradictory images and sounds: the speeches of the general, advertisements for milk powder, the shortage of gasoline in Madrid, a random bullfight, and the scarcity of food in the countryside. These problems disappeared as a result of the social transformations of the last two to three decades; in Belchite, you can still walk through the uninhabited streets of the old town amid the ruin of a Francoist urban utopia.
The pastiche of contradictory images in Belchite mirrors Basilio Martín’s film. Archaeologists come here to reveal what the narrative of national reconciliation has buried, and it is in the restlessness of their gestures that they find what was concealed over so many years of repression and silence. Archaeologists show how traces on the earth and objects lost 80 years ago have the power to rescue memories and contribute to a more critical understanding of the world. The images in Portraits for After a War were taken in September 2015, during days of intense work. There are shadows in them that cover faces and ruins, and there are flashes of light, as if announcing a new idea or a subterranean discovery: this chiaroscuro is the restlessness of those who get up at seven and spend a summer day searching for the things of justice.
This work by Rui Gomes Coelho was previously exhibited at the Carmo Archaeological Museum in Lisbon, December 2015 - January 2016.
For more information about Rui check out these:
For another Featured Project by Rui on artarchaeologies.com have a look at this:
