Reclaiming the Truth:

       Collaborative visual project

    by Julio Etchart and Holly Birtles

​​​This deconstruction of colonial museums and public spaces is a collaboration with photographic artist Holly Birtles, who disrupts and manipulates my photos of colonial objects and locations worldwide. By symbolically destroying the imagery using processes of restoration techniques such as gold leaf, varnish and wax resin that are then juxtaposed with the original documents, the notion of fixing and restoring is subverted. The artworks are supported by critical text from renowned authors. The aim of the intervention is to challenge the toxic inheritance of the plunder of the colonial era by agents of former imperial powers. Many of those relics are now the subject of reparation and restitution, a conversation that this project is aspiring to join. The images were finalists in the Creative section of the Sony World Photography Awards 2025, and are published in the exhibition catalogue.