Fortaleza Europa is a project built from a look at the historical symbolism of wall or fortress.
Starting from the world's most famous walls, such as the wall of China, Hadrian's in Scotland, Berlin's or Trump's, we can deduce that these constructions were not merely protective devices against the invasion of would-be barbarians, invaders coming from abroad or in other cases to prevent their escape, paradoxically they are what makes impossible the expansion and maintenance of empires.

Therefore, they are mechanisms associated with certain narratives that produce multiple and sometimes opposite chain reactions. As configurations that reduce communication between individuals and peoples, that make cultural exchanges impossible, and they are mechanisms that only temporarily guarantee the existence of great empires. Simultaneously in its totalitarian ideological smallness, averse to the most basic humanistic ideals, they are the motor that has historically led them to their inexorable final implosion.

Fortaleza Europa therefore results in the appropriation of a series of photos of the Atlantic Wall that Nazi Germany built during World War II around northern Europe. In this project the wall emerges as a symbolic evocation of mood arise from new European walls, as created by Schengen, by racism or ethnic and religious discrimination. A phenomenon that seems to forget and wipe its memory, and the source of its material wealth and human, came from the free trade and cultural exchange with other peoples of the five parts of the world, with its intrinsic diversity and multiplicity, passed through Europe or because they decided to live there.

Bio
João Fonte Santa (Évora, 1965). Lives and works in Lisbon. His work has been exhibited multiple times at individual and group exhibitions, in galeries and institutions. His work is present in different private and public collections. Ilustrator for international and national magazines and publishers. Graduated in Visual Arts — Painting at FBAUL.