Post by Dr Marcelo de Melo

My work ‘Fachada Holandesa’ [Dutch Façade] (2010) is currently on view at ART'N LIMA, Ponte de Lima, Portugal, until 27 September 2026. The piece takes the form of a miniature Amsterdam canal house built entirely from dyed sugar cubes. Its appearance is seductive: the stepped gable rises with an almost festive, colourful familiarity. From the outside, Amsterdam looks like a fairy tale. But the solidity is an illusion. Sugar dissolves, the house disappears. And so it is with the countries we choose, or are forced, to inhabit. From a distance they seem sweet, welcoming, open. The façade promises belonging. Reality, often, does not keep that promise. For the migrant, the façade becomes double: the one the country presents, and the one he builds to survive, a performance of integration and belonging, while underneath lives the fragility, the effort, the strangeness of inhabiting a place that is not entirely yours. The work was conceived as an ephemeral performance. After its construction and photographic documentation, the miniature was slowly flooded and dissolved. What remains is only this photograph, a document of something that no longer exists, a memory fixed at the moment before destruction. Sugar is not an innocent material. The history of sugar is the history of colonialism. The Dutch West India Company controlled vast regions of northeast Brazil in the 17th century, exploiting land and people to feed Europe’s appetite for sweetness. To build a Dutch house out of Brazilian sugar is a historical gesture as much as a personal one. As a Brazilian artist living in Amsterdam since 2005, I know this ambivalence from the inside. ‘Fachada Holandesa’ is not an accusation, it is a work that asks, with delicacy and humour: what do we build when we arrive in a new country? How long does it last? And what remains when the water rises? ART'N LIMA, Ponte de Lima, Portugal On view until 27 September 2026   #ContemporaryArt #BrazilianArt #Amsterdam #Colonialism #EphemeralArt #PontedeLima #sugar