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Located off the western coast of Africa, the island of São Vicente in Cabo Verde is home to the community of Portelinha. From a distance, the small neighbourhood appears similar to any other suburb of the capital city of Mindelo, but upon closer look, the logos of major oil corporations such as Repsol, Galp, Mobil, Shell, etc., become visible and abundant on the walls of its scattered houses.
Stretching across hills and open fields, these are known as Casa Tambor: self-built houses, constructed using discarded and flattened metal oil drums (barrels).
Most of these barrels are initially filled with crude oil in Western African countries like Nigeria or Angola and subsequently transported to the United States. After serving this purpose, they are cleaned and prepared for reuse.
Once more, they return to the sea, this time transporting items like clothes, toys or food, from the Cape Verdean diaspora to their relatives in their homeland. Upon reaching their destination, they are emptied, flattened, and repurposed for local people in need, who seek raw materials for building their homes.
In the current global capitalist system, the waste produced by western economies moves across different regions and undergo different applications. These marked and discarded metal barrels transform into the walls and roofs of Portelinha, with the size of the houses dictated by the rigid standard dimensions of the barrels, as set by the global crude oil shipping industry.
Casa Capital
José Pedro Cortes
22.4x16.6cm, 120 pages
Includes the essay 'Like a Body Being Covered' (in English and Portuguese) by Nuno Flores
ISBN: 978-989-36176-5-6
Designed by Thomas Spallek Studio and Carolina Feijó
First copies ship in early June 2026
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