In Benin, there is still fear of the sea, haunted by memories of slavery. This memory endures—along Ouidah’s “Slave Route”, in abandoned Portuguese buildings, in monuments heavy with silence, and in the gestures of dance carried by the wind and the waves. It is kept alive in the words of elders, who speak of light and the hope of recovering what was lost. The video-dance work arose from interviews with Vodun priests, whose insights guided a collaboration with dancers. Benin, one of the epicentres of the transatlantic slave trade, still carries vivid traces of this history. Along the Slave Route, captives endured confinement and psychological manipulation before forced embarkation. The work also seeks to demystify Vodun, often stigmatised as “dark magic,” but in fact a profound spiritual tradition rooted in resilience.
Vanessa Fernandes, Tradição e imaginação, 2019. Full HD video, colour, sound, 4'32".
Vanessa Fernandes was born in Guinea-Bissau in 1978. She has lived in Paris, Macau, Porto, Germany, and currently resides in Aveiro. She holds a Master's degree in Film and Television Directing from ESAP. She contributed to Os 100 melhores planos do cinema by Nélson Araújo and Drive-in: Design em projeção by Joana Rafael and Patrícia Serqueira Brás. In 2023, she co-directed with Ivo Reis Forma Livre para a Interculturalidade, a project supported by DGArtes. She exhibited alongside visual artist Xin Song in Tales of Two Cities III: Invented Sea: Porto and New York at Espaço Rampa, Porto, curated by Michelle Loh (New York). She participated with the video art piece Every monster needs a place to stay in the exhibition Íntimo a político: um avatar coletivo with the InterStruct Collective at Espaço Mira – Porto; and presented the video installation Stand here at the 8th Triangle Network at Hangar – Centro de Investigação Artística in Lisbon. She is featured in the book Atlantica: Contemporary Art from Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe and their Diaspora. She appeared in Mudança (2021) by Welket Bungué and Resonance Spiral (2024) by Filipa César and Mario Pina, shown at MoMA (USA), both selected for Berlinale in Germany. Between Porto, Lisbon, and the Algarve, she collaborates with theatre companies and cultural associations such as Cão Danado, AgitLab, VIC Art House, Corpodehoje, Femafro, UNA, and SOS Racismo. She has directed several short films, including Tradição e imaginação, Mikambaru, Si destinu, Fiji, Cura, MadMudPool, and the RTPLab series Matemática Salteada. She has participated in festivals such as: Festival Internacional de Cinema de Cabo Verde in Praia (winning Best Short Film), Festival de Cinema Experimental de Bogotá, Diáspora International Film Festival Nilo – Kampala, and Festival da Igualdade in Kyiv. In partnership with Ivo Reis and the project Espectro Visível, she created the multimedia installation Museu2059, a Video Mapping for the III Festival da Rua de Layounne, and the performance Chumbo e Algodão, presented at TAGV in Coimbra and the Fórum Internacional de Gaia 2019. She has been invited to take part in international debates and conferences, including the Afroeuropeans Studies Conference, Para nós, por nós: produção cultural africana, and the international conference organized by the Centro de Estudos Africanos do Porto, A luta das mulheres no Cinema africano e Médio Oriente (2016).