Small life, great death: pandemics, epidemics and memory of images in late 19th and early 20th-Century Amazônia

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes artistic representations of disease and death in painting collections from Belém do Pará between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The article proposes a cross-sectional reading as a heuristic resource based on questions that the Covid-19 pandemic has raised. It aims, therefore, to establish a dialogue between the present and the past through images, powers, reverberations, discursive records, and museum exhibitions. Thus, diseases portrayed in paintings, such as cancer and tuberculosis, seen in the context of epidemics of belle-époque, are analyzed not only in the context of the comorbidities of the pandemic of the present time, but also as a cognitive repertoire of history and memory of images in Amazônia.

Keywords:
pandemic; image memory; painting; museums; Amazônia