Aveiro played host to "A Saudade that Ties," a participatory intervention presented on Saturday, September 12, near the Mercado Manuel Firmino, as part of RIA 2026 – Streets of Artistic Intervention, organized by Agora Aveiro. The proposal originated from a familiar gesture in the city: ribbons with names, messages, and affections that accumulate on the bridges of Aveiro. Participants were invited to think of something or someone they felt Saudade for and to choose between two ribbon colors, with red associated with a Saudade that could still be "killed" and white with one that would no longer be possible to "kill."
After writing on the ribbons, each person looked for a place for it on a metal structure designed as a map, situating their Saudade between past, present, and future, between places already visited and still to discover. The structure, initially empty, gradually gained color and movement as it received responses. The team responsible explained that the moment of hesitation by participants was precisely what interested them, seeking to understand what happened when these questions were posed to other people and whether it would be so obvious to locate a Saudade.
The intervention was conceived by Dalila, a designer and researcher native to Aveiro who grew up in Germany after emigrating with her parents at age eight. Her personal experience of living between two countries, always with the idea of returning to Portugal but also feeling Saudade for what she left behind, became research material during her master's in Design at the University of Aveiro, giving rise to the project "Anatomy of Saudade," which she continues to develop independently.
"A Saudade that Ties" has now brought some of these questions back to the public space of the city where the research began. Several of the ribbons placed were red, indicating that, for those who chose them, what they felt Saudade for could still be experienced or found again, although the author prefers not to draw a definitive conclusion about the feeling from this observation.
