Archives mirror the structures that create them and, as such, are powerful tools for the study and undoing of settler-colonialist and imperialist epistemologies.

It was my first work at the Brazilian National Archives during my master’s degree in the early 2000s that changed my professional identity from that of a practicing designer to a design historian. But it was not just the work of the historian in reading and interpretating documentary evidence that drove my professional transformation. In the National Archives, besides finding the usual rhythms, repetitions and insights into the past generated by documentary evidence, I also found omissions, absences, and erasures in both the keeping of documents and the writing of history. I noted then that, although a considerable production of ephemera and communication design had taken place in Brazil at least since 1808, when the Portuguese lifted the printing press ban in Brazil, no trace of that past had been written into the design history I was taught. Why no evidence of past visual and material culture was part of the history of my profession and activity during my design training? Earlier in my career I gained a critical consciousness on how history is partially written; this has led to a lifelong interest in reflective writing and analytically assessing archival methods.

More recently, the search for documental records has turned unexpectedly into a layered unpacking and questioning of the research methods and statecraft structures that support and obliterate archives. This work led to a prize-winning reflective essay and a series of public engagement opportunities where I continually acknowledge and discuss the impact of archival research on the researcher.