The aim of my current PhD research is to further the understanding of nineteenth-century representations of Brazil, with special emphasis on Brazilian nationalism and the country’s engagement with modernity. I have been addressing these themes by focusing on the national participation in some international exhibitions, from its first official appearance at the 1862 Exhibition in London to the Exposição Internacional do Centenário in Rio de Janeiro in 1922, the only time Brazil hosted a world’s fair.

Using the theoretical framework established by studies in nationalism, sociology of translation, anthropology, gender theory and design history, I explore how national objects, publications, maps, displays of natural resources, amongst other designed artefacts exhibited abroad, materialised and compelled such nationalism and modernity.

Despite being a multicultural and extremely diverse country, Brazil was more than often represented itself as a homogeneous and cohesive nation during the period under study. In less than a hundred years, Brazil came from being a liberal but slavery-bound monarchy to become a federalist, positivist republic. Alongside manumission, urban reforms, and industrialisation, the nation underwent unprecedented political, economic, and cultural changes. My research questions, therefore, how and why a hegemonic view of Brazil was projected in international exhibitions in a period of intense national modernisation.

In the wider context of Design History, my research wishes to offer an alternative interpretation for the meaning of these exhibitions to 'new' nations, a theme under-explored by the established literature, usually centred on the European and North American experiences.