Gabriela Ruivo Trindade told Lusa news agency that this project may help to understand "in which way, material and immaterial, objective and subjective, the pandemic affected and affects the creation of the several artists involved, and how this reflects in their own creation".
It was from frequent long-distance phone conversations between Trindade and Nuno Gomes Garcia, who live in London and Paris, respectively, that the idea to gather testimonies in Portuguese about the experience of the pandemic came up.
The two realized that, even though they were living in countries with different realities and approaches, the words used were identical to write feelings about successive confinements, isolation, or concerns about inequality and poverty.
"It was during these conversations that we wondered what it would be like in the other Portuguese speaking countries. If, despite the totally different realities where we live, a Lusophone living in Europe would use the same words as a Lusophone living in Brazil, Angola or Mozambique to express those feelings caused by confinement," explained the writer, winner in 2013 of the LeYa prize with her first novel, "Another Voice."
The page [https://www.mapasdoconfinamento.com/] intends, she explained, "to create a platform for union among various Portuguese-speaking artists, or those linked to the Portuguese language," mobilizing writers, poets, illustrators, visual artists, photographers or actors, and "overcome the obstacles caused by the pandemic to artistic creation."
The project also intends to be an "act of resistance" by exposing the "already catastrophic reality" of lack of support for culture that the respective professionals have felt in the last few months.
The page was launched this month, coinciding with the first anniversary of the covid-19 pandemic, officially declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020.
Angolans Ondjaki and Lopito Feijóo, Portuguese Afonso Cruz, Ana Luísa Amaral, Ana Cristina Silva, and Rui Zink, Brazilians Nara Vidal, João Anzanello Carrascoza, Ronaldo Cagiano, Marcela Dantés, Mozambicans Hirondina Joshua and Mélio Tinga, and Guinean Emílio Tavares Lima are some of the contributors.
The network of collaborators extends to the United Kingdom, France, and Holland, where several of the translators are, since the site will also have English and French versions of the texts.
Gabriela Ruivo Trindade lives in London, where she runs the online bookstore Miúda Books, dedicated to Portuguese-language children's literature, and Nuno Gomes Garcia, finalist for the LeYa Prize in 2014, published the novel "Zalatune" this year, and is working in the French capital as an editorial consultant.
