A part of my practice has been to frequently work on reflections about issues related to how history gets written and how it’s permanently reinterpreted and reappropriated. This work is placed in this thematic.

The photograph was taken in the baroque chapel of Saint John the Baptist (the saint having been chosen because of his namesake King John V of Portugal) and was lavishly built in the XVIII century from the gold coming in from colonial Brazil. The chapel was commissioned and made in Rome by the finest Roman artists, being completed and set up there in 1744 to be blessed by Pope Benedict XIV, who celebrated a mass in it. The same year, the chapel was dismounted and shipped to Lisbon, filling up three ships, to be rebuilt in its current location in the Saint Roch church.

This chapel is a clear representation, as beautiful as it is conspicuous, of power (regal and religious). It is presently undergoing an extensive conservation work that goes this time by a new agenda focussed on the promotion of the past and of the architectural heritage, aiming at the development of tourism for economical reasons and at the identitarian affirmation of the cultural predominance of the Church in our history. Interestingly, the conservation work is actually carried out exclusively by women. This could be a sign of the increasing feminisation of society and the working world, or the sign that women are still restricted to less noticeable and more gentle kinds of work, within the canonical standard of the feminine condition, as accepted for centuries (wether by option or by lack of option, consciously or unconsciously). The title is a recognition of these unassuming “restorers”.

The scene appears quite contemporary, with plastic vessels containing chemicals, white asspetic workwear and electric spotlights, but at the same time evocative in a way of Gustave Caillebotte’s painting called "Les raboteurs de parquet". But, in that painting, only men are represented, working hard at scraping floors.