In the seed. Auto-care workshop with Vanessa Fernandes and Satna Fai.

The workshop led by Vanessa Fernandes had three phases, with the first day focusing on collective self-care and relaxation exercises and the seed as the starting point for the research work. Fernandes collected seeds and shared them so that they could be identified by the women and from which sharing developed. This workshop took place during the cashew harvest season and the women were intensely concerned about the lack of sales of their crops. The cashew market in Guinea Bissau has fallen dramatically in recent years, which has created economic tensions for these communities that depend partly on this monoculture. On the second day, the workshop focussed on listening to various audio documents from Guinea Bissau’s audiovisual archive, which is kept in the Media Library, focusing on historical speeches about women. The most relevant were the documents containing speeches by Carmen Pereira and Amílcar Cabral. On the third day, in addition to other physical exercises and dances led by Vanessa Fernandes, which also served as a lead-in to the Nhambarkutar project proposed the following week by Sancho Silva, the women walked in the forest and searched for memories of these places, which they then shared collectively.

Support PROCULTURA financed by the European Union and co-financed by the Camões Institute and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation