Summon Bones
FANUN RUIN
© Susana Paiva
FANUN RUIN was conceived as part of the parallel programming of the Europa Oxalá exhibition, which reflects on the colonial past and its effect on the present, and prolongs the debate around memory, identity and mourning.
Zia Soares' performance has as its starting point her encounter with the collection of 35 human skulls arranged in a cabinet in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. In 1882, headhunting rites took place in the eastern part of the island of Timor, exhorted by the Portuguese invaders. Among those decapitated, 35 skulls were usurped and exiled from their territory of origin, Timor.
©Susana Paiva
“FANUN RUIN — which translates from Tetum (Timor-Leste's national language) into English, To Summon Bones — is a performance to expel the confrontation with faceless death.
How can one repair violence, if not with the courage to expose it, producing and provoking other configurations of itself, and without subjecting the unburied to a new trauma?
It is necessary to perform the wound, to repeat the gesture without truce until it becomes obsolete.
No, it's not about rewriting History, but about writing and performing it, accepting in advance that it will still remain unfinished. It is about opening the mourning place, the ceremonial place, where the immeasurable violence of maiming, rape, dehumanization make room to silence were only the murmur can break out like a poison that spreads slowly and takes root in the unavoidable pulse of ulterity.
Hau iha imi nia oin.
Hau la sai daar hosi nee too ita nia rain hatudu imi nia oin.
Manu kokoreek ona, asu la harii ona
Ita nia Uma Lulik hein imi.
I stand before you.
I will not leave until our land reveals your faces.
The rooster crowed and the dog no longer barks.
Our Uma Lulik [Sacred House] awaits you.”
Zia Soares
©Susana Paiva
Text, direction and performed by Zia Soares
Scenography and costume by Neusa Trovoada
Video co-creation António Castelo
Music by Xullaji
Lighting design by Mafalda Oliveira
Co-creation of the Movement by Lucília Raimundo
Video and projection by Cláudia Sevivas
Video casting Agostinho de Araújo, Aoaní Salvaterra, Domingos Soares, Fátima Guterres, Lídia Araújo, Lucília Raimundo, Manuel de Araújo, Priscila Soares
Scenography assistance by Carlos Trovoada, Nig d’Alva
Makeup by Ana Roma
Photography by António Castelo, Susana Paiva
General assistance by Aoaní d’Alva, Mariana Frazão
Co-produced by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Sowing_arts
Supported by the Centro Cultural da Malaposta, Polo Cultural Gaivotas Boavista
Zia Soares is an artist supported by apap – FEMINIST FUTURES, a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union
Thanks to Domingos Soares and Priscila Soares, Agostinho de Araújo, Ana Alves, António Soares Nunes, Bruno Sena Martins, Dulce Fernandes, José Amaral, Luís Costa, Manuel de Araújo