The Morro of Providence is living memory. Its alleys and alleys carry layers of history that resist attempts at erasure and symbolic violence that marked, and still mark, the relationship between the city and the hill. In the Providence Gallery, preserving this memory is a political act, not nostalgic.
Therefore, we reaffirm our commitment that the stories of Providence, often silenced by official memory, have a leading role, form and presence in the debates on heritage, city and identity. We claim the right to tell ourselves what we live, creating collections, narratives and circulation devices that connect past, present and future.
By making memory a tool of emancipation and search for repair, we strengthen the collective belonging and reposition the Morro da Providence as a fundamental part of the history and imaginary of Rio de Janeiro and Brazil.
Telling our story is one of the main ways to affirm our existence. For a long time, Morro da Providência, despite being the first favela in Brazil and neighboring the historical center of Rio de Janeiro, was invisible in official speeches, treated as a margin of the city that helped build. Claiming the right to narrative is claiming the right to memory, presence and future.
In this line of action, we promote initiatives that value life stories, affective memories and collective trajectories, strengthening the feeling of belonging and affirming the multiple identities that form Providence. An example of this is the Provi Relics, project of records of oral history with residents of the hill that keep knowledge and experiences fundamental to the memory of the territory. These accounts are transformed into videos that integrate both the collection of the Providence Gallery and our social networks, creating a dynamic of safeguarding and visibility of our stories.
An essential part of our memory work is the creation of a collection that gathers, organizes, preserves and shares records, objects and documents that tell the history of the Morro da Providência and the Gallery of Providence itself. More than keeping, we want to take care of our memories with political and affective intentionality, recognizing the importance of archiving what constitutes us and the way we want to be represented, from historical documents to everyday records, passing through images, sounds, objects and oralities.
We therefore act in the creation and expansion of a digital Community acquis, which already brings together more than 300 cataloged items. This base works simultaneously as a file and affirmation mechanism, and has been articulated with research projects, exhibitions, academic works and educational actions.
Collective memory is a field of dispute. In territories such as Providence, where official history usually silences our trajectories, researching means digging senses, challenging erasures and producing presence. Our goal is not only to preserve, we also want to create ways to make these memories visible, accessible and politically mobilizing.
In this line of action, we understand the research and the production of knowledge as coping and creation practices, able to dispute narratives and generate new meanings about the territory from who lives it. So we invested in a continuing research practice, which articulates listening in the field with the consultation of official collections. All the material raised, thus, unfolds in different contents and languages, because, for us, research is also imagining ways to ensure that our stories never cease to be told.
