“O Barco / The Boat” by artist Grada Kilomba is an installation made up of 140 blocks, which form the silhouette of the bottom of a ship and minutely design the space created to accommodate the bodies of millions of Africans, enslaved by European empires. Inaugurated at the BoCA biennial, the installation stretches 32 meters along the Tagus River in MAAT’s Coal Square.

The work invites the public to enter a garden of memory, in which poems rest on blocks of burnt wood, recalling forgotten histories and identities. What stories are told? Where are they told? How are they told? And told by whom?

A performance was also presented, directed by Grada Kilomba, with musical production by Kalafe Epalanga and starring Afro-descendant artists, in a transdisciplinary dialogue with singing, percussion and dance.