In this visual essay, Paulo Tavares intervenes in Habitat, an arts and design magazine edited by architect Lina Bo Bardi in the 1950s. Habitat disseminated not only images of modern art and architecture but also images of Indigenous artifacts. In doing so, it simultaneously presented its audience with the vocabulary of modernism and native forms of cultural expression, aligning itself with the primitivist imaginaries of the avant-garde.
By re-signifying dominant images and imaginaries, Des-Habitat guides us through a visual narrative on the coloniality of modern architecture and its media, opening a horizon for the potential decolonization of its legacies.
