Every Wall is a Statement is an installation of 1850 hand-painted tiles that was shown in a small square by Torre dos Clérigos [Porto], very close to the place of the old Fernandina City Wall, built in the 14th century during the reign of D. Afonso IV and concluded during the reign of D. Fernando. In 1787, the first stretches of the wall were demolished in this part of the city, Clérigos, to clear space for the construction of new neighborhoods to house the city’s growing population. Today we understand concepts such as “Heritage” very differently. Until the 1830s, heritage was simply seen as the “remnants of Antiquity” (Choay, 1992: 12). Only in 1931, with the Athens Charter, will Europe, as a collective, define some of the conservation principles for its built heritage.
Part of the commemorations of the 20 years of the classification of Porto’s old city as a World Heritage Site, this piece creates links between present and past, but also with the future. Acknowledging that the conservation of our heritage must be a key element in contemporary cultural policies, it also underlines the necessity for an open debate on what should be preserved and what should give place to new functionalities. As a matter of logic, we know that the city would have never had its urban expansion and the economic and social benefits it provided if the Fernandina Wall had not been demolished. This link with the present is also materialized in the questioning of the wall and the meanings it conveys in a developed and supposedly free Western world, a world that keeps promising and investing on the construction of walls — physical walls, but also economic and social walls.
This work is a praise of the values of our built and historical heritage, but also those of the ethical and moral heritage our societies have built throughout centuries of learning.
Translated by José Roseira