Organised by the Colombian Chamber of Books and Corferias, this year's edition of FILBo, which has Sweden as its guest country, opened its doors last week and has a range of writers that includes names such as the Spanish Arturo Pérez-Reverte or Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, according to information available on the event's website.
Last Wednesday, the poet, essayist and novelist Nuno Júdice participated in a conversation with the Colombian poet and essayist John Galán Casanova about the work “Os Lusíadas”. During the conversation, Nuno Júdice, winner of the Queen Sofia Prize for Latin American Poetry, explained why this work, which soon celebrates 450 years, continues to magnetise new generations of writers.
Then on Saturday, Portuguese curator and essayist António Pinto Ribeiro participated in a conversation on the theme “is it possible to decolonise museums?”. "Museums are either post-colonial or they are nothing" was António Pinto Ribeiro's starting line for a lecture at the VIII Iberoamerican Museum Meeting, in 2014, in which he presented his ideas on what some define as "the process to which institutions submit to broaden their perspectives beyond those of the dominant cultural group, particularly white colonisers". Through a re-reading of the collections of Western museums, many of them constituted when the world was still divided into colonial empires, the Portuguese critic will present at FILBo his vision of where not only the curators, but also the institutions in his charge, should be heading.
Writer Ana Pessoa participated in the event on the 13th, in which she spoke about “the search for a place in the world”, based on some of the youth books she is the author. The books “The red notebook of the karate girl” and “Mary John” are two of the works that, through a poetic and melancholic prose, transport the reader through the complexities of the transition to adulthood and the uncertainty of change, and which served as topic for conversation. FILBo, which is a reference in Latin America, had its 2020 edition postponed, taking place this year in digital format, with a platform that brings together all its cultural, academic and professional programming. These activities will be available on the website and on the fair's social media pages.