As is recurrent in the artist’s practice, both the conceptual process and the realization of this work take as a pretext the tasks performed at the workplace and in working hours. In this case, the artist’s double condition of a visual artist working as an assistant at the National Palace of Sintra enables him to use his income-earning activities as the raw material for his art. In doing so, the artist creates a distance between himself, his artistic practice, and the remunerated work. Such distance allows for perspective, reflection and critical thinking as the artist forays into the field of pragmatism, reflecting it as much as reflecting on it in the process.

The title – Por Bem – is a motto of King Dom João I that is repeatedly painted on the ceiling of one of the rooms of National Palace of Sintra and to which are associated various legends and stories (similar to those connected with the English “Honni soit qui mal y pense” motto and King Edward III).

In this video, the artist records himself carrying around a portrait allegedly of King Dom Sebastian, a romantic icon of Portuguese national identity. This portrait is the same one that the artist had dusted in the video On the other side of the picture (the dust of history). Nowadays, the referred portrait presents conspicuously a series of clues leading to its interpretation as a portrait of King Sebastian. However, it is now believed to be a copy made by Alonso Sánchez Coello of an original painted in Spain by Sofonisba Anguissola portraying the ill-fated Carlos, Prince of Asturias (1545-1568), the eldest son of Philip II by his first wife, Maria of Portugal, and who is said to have born a resemblance to his cousin King Dom Sebastian. The picture was modified at a later date by the addition of elements carefully chosen to identify the sitter with the Portuguese King whose body disappeared at the Alcácer-Quibir battle in Morocco. Those elements are the Portuguese royal arms and the following inscription: Portrait of King Dom Sebastian I, sixteenth of Portugal, made in the era of 1671.

Recent radiologic examination of the painting showed that additional changes had been made to the picture. In particular, it was discovered that the badge hanging from the King’s collar was originally that of the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece. It had been repainted with the cross-shaped badge of the Portuguese Order of Christ, a symbol deeply linked to the most glorious feats of the Portuguese navigations of the Discoveries Age, as well as with a series of modern political and military institutions and organizations.

The artist carries the picture of King Sebastian along the rooms of the palace that are associated with legends and historical anecdotes (the Swan room, the Magpie room, the Coats of arms room, King Sebastian’s chamber, King Afonso VI’s chamber). By doing so, he implicitly affirms the icon’s threefold transitoriety: as a fragile object whose identification has suffered a heavy blow and because the national consciousness it represents, steadily constructed after the independence of 1640 and claimed ever since to various ends, is everything but eternal, or mythical, or beyond historical questioning. The picture and the actions performed upon it by the artist are used to trigger a reflection on questions related to national identity, its myths, and to historical legitimizations based on fictional constructs.

Nevertheless, this reflection is not only about demythologizing Portuguese identity, associated to an image that happens to be a fake. The video also shows the palace, the imposing settings of a place that was once the residence of kings and is now a museum, a place where history crystallizes and is vertiginously exhibited as a consumer item. The artist considers the museum as a living entity, inhabited by the bodies of those who work there and the crowds of visitors. An archive full of life, the museum is also, paradoxically, the reliquary that enshrines history. King Sebastian’s presence is to be felt in the museum. His picture might be a forgery, but the artist keeps coming back to it; this time, to define his own individual identity.