During a one month artist residency in Budapest for which I had been selected as part of the cultural exchange programme run by the Lisbon and Budapest city councils, I designed a multiple projection video installation that was first exhibited at the Magyar Mühely Galéria - MMG in Budapest and then at the Galeria Quadrum, Palácio dos Coruchéus, in Lisbon. In accordance with my practice, I frequently use this projection device to investigate combinations of meaning going beyond the simple addition of the images (where image A + image B are not equal to the meaning AB, but rather producing something new, AB + C).

Filmed at the Memento Park in Budapest – an open space museum dedicated to the statuary of the Hungarian communist regime (1949-1989) – "The Stalin's Boots" is a project about how history is constantly rewritten. In my view, the park’s grounds are quite paradigmatic of how any power system in place will appropriate the political, social, cultural and economic symbols of the previous systems, especially those it opposes. More than sharing a reflection on communism or capitalism, in this work I try to reflect more broadly on the ephemeral destiny of empires and power systems, and on how their symbols are reinterpreted differently according to the historical period. In this sense, the past is not fixed and definitive, exclusively based on facts within a closed sequential catalogation order. The past is an extremely dynamic thing subject to constant reinterpretation according to the whim of the present moment, or, better, according to the whim of each of the present moments in succession.

Sometimes, these appropriations and reinterpretations can lead to very peculiar situations like the use of fascist statuary to promote democracy, or to make money by turning communist iconography into tourist attractions, as happens typically in Memento Park.

Taking this concept and using the resources of video art I created a double game of images. Through image edition, I achieve what can be described as a choreography of the tourists’ movements in contrast with the immobility of the gigantic statues. With the installation, I break the linearity of the image sequence, duplicating it along the architectural lines of the exhibition space itself.