LITTLE AFRICAS

In 2019, Carlos Vergara covered part of the ground at the Valongo Wharf with nine units of canvas. Using fragments and soil from the archaeological site as pigment, he imprinted the canvases with the irregular contours of the stones trodden by the enslaved Africans and their tormentors. The six sections exhibited here bring the tragedy’s physical traces into the gallery and demarcate the threshold between the past and the future that people of African descent were able to build from it.