Islandscapes of the Azores and Madeira in the Art of Nuno Henrique, Maria José Cavaco and Rui Melo

Abstract

This article analyses a number of representations of the islandscapes of the Madeira and the Azores archipelagos. These representations highlight an aspect that is generally outside the framework of the hegemonic continental perspective of the islands: ie the fragility, uncertainty, resilience and imperfection of human existence on them and the local experience and knowledge of their inhabitants. In this study, I raise the following questions: i) in what way can representations of islandscapes contribute to an independent insular imaginary? and ii) what contribution can insular Atlantic criticism offer to the deconstruction of dominant epistemologies? I argue that the works analysed in the article share an archipelagic aesthetic (in that the deconstruction of dominant stereotypes unleashes a poetic impulse that "makes strange" what is otherwise familiar. As such, these works exercise freedom from opacity - vis-a-vis the reductive transparency of insular representation created by well-established continental cultural traditions - thereby contributing to the possibility of the coexistence of different worldviews.