Decolonial Art Practices for Circular Futures: Lessons from the Moliceiro Cultural Ecosystem
Clara Sarmento

This proposal examines how the cultural ecosystem surrounding the moliceiro boat tradition in Ria de Aveiro (Portugal) offers a model of circular and community-rooted environmental practice grounded in traditional ecological knowledge and ancestral creative expression. Drawing on more than two decades of ethnographic fieldwork, the study analyses the painted panels of moliceiro boats as community produced visual narratives that document deep-rooted ecological knowledge, articulate critiques of environmental degradation and propose context-specific solutions embedded in local experience.
The moliceiro case demonstrates how circularity can emerge organically within traditional practices that integrate sustainable resource management, artisanal craftsmanship and co-creative artistic communication. This proposal highlights the ways in which moliceiro art functions as a community-led environmental monitoring system, a mobile medium of protest and a platform for visual sovereignty through which local actors reclaim narrative agency. Methodologically, the work offers an interdisciplinary framework combining participatory ethnography, visual analysis and cultural ecosystem mapping, contributing directly to the goals of CIRCUL’ARTs, particularly the development of creative, community-empowered methodologies for circular transition driven by art and intergenerational knowledge.
By foregrounding examples of traditional ecological knowledge, sustainable boatbuilding techniques, traditional seaweed harvesting and artisanal salt production, the case illustrates how revitalised heritage practices can support circular futures that respect territory, decentralise knowledge and reinforce cultural resilience. Although rooted in a peripheral European context, the model speaks to wider global challenges and opens pathways for comparative dialogues with non-European contexts where artistic and community-embedded ecological practices also serve as vectors of circularity, activism and territorial belonging.
By engaging with selected standpoints of decolonial theory and Indigenous research methodologies, the proposal foregrounds epistemic justice and the co-creation of plural knowledge systems. In tune with Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Bagele Chilisa, Nego Bispo and Leda Maria Martins, among others, it calls for methodologies grounded in orality, collectivity, shared responsibility and intellectual sovereignty that may inspire the decolonisation of ecological knowledge worldwide.