Daniel Barroca’s works are concerned with memory and its images, searching for contemporary interpretations of history’s fragmentary legacies such as photos, pictures, and sound and voice recordings. Barroca has a particular interest in materials that enable highly subjective views of a specific historical epoch or event, in the form of personal recordings by unknown individuals. On this basis, he develops his drawings, films and photo installations and creates perspectives that can be compared and contrasted with the ‘official’ version in the history books.

“Soldier Playing with Dead Lizard” is a video installation; its collages of images and sounds are based on private snapshots taken by Portuguese soldiers who fought in the colonial war in Guinea-Bissau during the 1960s and 70s. It is the artist’s intention to reflect the historical events only indirectly, which is an expression of Barroca’s subtle poetic-visual language; on the other hand, it is also a pointer to the actual political conditions in Portugal at the time, for under the junta it was impossible to speak openly and critically about the war in the colonies, although it was bleeding the country dry.