The mural intervention follows in the footsteps of All My Independent Women (AMIW), a project that I started in the city of Guimarães in 2005 (the Sociedade Martins Sarmento). AMIW is a network of artists who use feminist methodologies to produce artistic gestures. In the form of an open-ended list, the project has been expanding and exhibited in other cities (Coimbra, in 2010; Vienna, in 2011; London, in 2012). It has also incorporated themes such as the Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters) (1972), the literary work by the Portuguese writers Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa, and the “archive” as a space for production, preservation and performativity.

In the CIAJG, the mural intervention weaves different threads that connect the “powers of persuasion” (“soft power”) pioneered by women, alluding to the event at the end of the 19th century, in which prominent female citizens from Guimarães supported a project to detach the city of Guimarães from the district of Braga, followed by its subsequent union with Porto.

The mural includes a commemorative painting about this event, that belongs to the Vimaranense Fund of the Sociedade Martins Sarmento.

The poster is a collaborative work that involves the designers “Joana & Mariana”, that addresses textures and iconographies related to different feminist struggles in Portugal. It celebrates the collective force that underpins all fundamental rights. It also reminds us of the need for continued defence of these rights. An offset print, it is distributed for free.

The audio functions as a chorus of voices - a polyphony – in which I recount various historical episodes, facts and assumptions, concrete actions and utopias associated to groups of Portuguese women. The guiding link between the different episodes is the search for a community, like that which Adrienne Rich talks about in her book, Conditions for Work: The Common World of Women (1976). This encourages our work to go further than we had dared. According to Rich, women “seek each other out” in the community, and thereby mutually strengthen each other. Today, as then, we need to conjugate in the plural, and strengthen and extend our networks.

Podcast credit sheet

Text Carla Cruz • Text editing Gisela Leal • Reading Carla Cruz e Rita Eustáquio • Audio recording Carla Cruz, Luís Eustáquio e Rita Eustáquio • Audio editing Carla Cruz e Andi Studer

Musical tracks (excerpts)

Sisters, The Stepney Sisters, 1975 • Deceptacon, Le Tigre, 1999 • À Pátria, Viana da Mota, 1894 • Debout les femmes, 39 Femmes, 2018 (1971) • Com quem eu quero, Miúda, 2012 • Independent Women Part I, Destiny's Child, 2000 • U.N.I.T.Y., Queen Latifah, 1993 • Assim Não, Gato Fedorento, 2007 • Mequetrefe, Arca 2020 • Bad Reputation, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, 1980