Exhibition.07

Who Are We Here - between pathways

The parishes of Prado and Remoães comprise a geographical area of great contrasts, as well as a port of arrivals and departures.

They deal, as it is the great history of the municipality of Melgaço, with a constant saga of immigration. The natives who remained would watch and joined groups of adventurers who, coming from all over, gathered on the wayward cross at Serra to receive the contraband they would take to the other side of the river Minho. The thermal spas, shared by Prado, Remoães and Paderne, brought the tourist flow to these localities, composing, with the proximity to Melgaço, a mosaic that contrasts with the descriptions of the villages high up in the mountains. Here we are in Ribeira. The proximity to the Village is also the proximity to a set of guarantees and conveniences attractive to those who lived in places farther from the municipality, and that, with some enrichment, bought land and settled here.

Today we find, in continuity, a parish divided in focal points. People who have always lived here, people who came here to live, people who have gone to other places. The gamble on the alvarinho wine, the new industry, the transformed landscape of Monte de Prado - once a wasteland for brushwood and grazing animals, nowadays a centre for sports, education and tourism. And, from one point to another, there are lives that are inherited, adopted, improvised and looking forward to the future.

By welcoming all these pathways and intersections, people present themselves to us today as a collage of unpacked stories. It is with this rich texture going back to the old and the contemporary, where oblique lines are drawn between the traditional and the innovative, that the multiple paths of Prado and Remoães are filled with.

The exhibition WHO ARE WE HERE - between pathways is projected according to this fragmented description. It is assembled from the collection of personal photographs provided by inhabitants of the Union of Parishes of Prado and Remoães, unveiling a multifaceted description and whose intersection of images intends to mirror the paths and crossroads traced by those who live here today.

Daniel Maciel

• Date: 04 August / 15 October 2019
• Location: Antigo Edifício da Escola Primária da Freguesia de Prado / União de Freguesias de Prado e Remoães