Archiving to care (for ourselves and for each other) Shared Outcomes of the Workshop 'O Forno da Amara'

One photograph. Two. Thirty-three. Two hundred and twenty-four. They arrive from all directions. Front doors open, biscuit-tin lids lift, family albums unfold. We pass them around, moving from photo to photo, from story to story. Some glow with light, others don’t quite fit; a few were hidden away or forgotten. Recollections emerge with every photo, and alongside them, the absent stories—those without a picture—become visible as well. The line between personal memories and shared ones begins to blur.

O Forno da Amara—named after one of the many bakeries that once stood on the street of Os Basquiños—is a community project that uses the power of domestic photographs to evoke and summon a more affective, cohesive present. Over the past year, residents of the streets and neighbourhoods of A Almáciga, Teo, Os Basquiños, Rúa de Abaixo, Santa Clara, and San Roque have shared family-album photographs at the CGAC with the aim of creating a living archive that bears witness to the transformation of the city and its inhabitants.

With this exhibition, we invite the public on a walk through the neighbourhood as remembered by the participants in the workshop, and drawing on oral accounts, we assemble a picture of what we wish for the future—the kneading trough, the toys, the kite, the mastic shrubs, the open door and window, the plaque, the sewing machine… All these objects and stories speak to us of food sovereignty, of independent and ingenious leisure, of memory, of a culture of repair, of care rooted in proximity, and of interdependent life. Without idealising the past, we bring together a compendium of images, stories and ways of living together that we consider valuable for the future of our neighbourhoods.

O Forno da Amara is a project by CGAC and La Querencia, with the participation of Raúl Fernández, José Luis Fernández, Javier Suárez, María Jesús Suárez, José Luis Veiga Goi, Carmen Rosende, Milagros Rey, Ricardo Villaverde, Manuel Sánchez, Ana Moure, Ana Escariz, and many more neighbours.