Banca de DEFESA: Daniel Benigna Lopes

Public Art, Official Art: the murals in the cities of Maputo and Matola, Mozambique

Public art; official art; mural; Mozambique; liberation script.

The present work analyzes mural art in Mozambique as a product and producer of discourses that perpetuate the official narrative about the liberation struggle and the construction of the post-independence country. Their texts are polysemic narratives with easy access to the public, but not always democratic in the ways they are used. Using photography, from the perspective of recording, presenting images for analysis, as well as an instrument for reading social reality, several murals were captured in the cities of Maputo and Matola. The work examines murals whose narratives point to the (re)construction of collective identity memories, from the perspective of official discourse. The murals Ode Samora, Life and Work of Samora and the Mural of Heroes have greater “attention and respect” from the surrounding community, as long as sufficient consideration is given to it for its symbolic value to contribute to its preservation. These murals praise great figures of the country’s history, besides reinforcing official narratives; adding to other means by which FRELIMO constructed the “liberation script”, in Borges Coelho’s terms, and the image of the Mozambican nation. Other murals, with their texts understood as ways of social strengthening, exemplify how their narratives are polysemic and that lessons can be drawn from them, going beyond the official narrative of the anti-colonial struggle.