Uma etnografia gráfica como forma de afeto e de memória: aflições, espíritos e processos de cura nas igrejas Zione em Maputo

Abstract

In 2016, three years after completing my Ph.D., I embarked on my first attempt to translate my ethnographic research conducted in Maputo, among the Zion communities, into a graphic language. Through a series of single illustrations, I aimed to visually condense key stages of the Zion healing path, synthesizing various stories and testimonies into individual images. This approach sought to encapsulate the symbolic and material universe of Zion within a graphic framework. Over the past few years, I have periodically revisited and refined these drawings in a cyclical process of creation and reflection. The illustrations presented in this article thus serve as a retrospective of this journey – an artistic exploration that emerged following the completion of my ethnographic dissertation. These drawings were created as a post-fieldwork representational language, reflecting memories from the field, testimonies collected, and personal experiences lived in between.