The National Museum of Brazil has experienced several “ends of the world”, through colonialism, extraction of Indigenous knowledge, decline of power, and fire. It was a place where knowledge was taken and controlled, in which Indigenous knowledge, religious beliefs, and cultural objects were removed from their original contexts and put on display. The ruin left by the fire is emblematic of these catastrophes. Therefore, the absence of the artifacts and the presence of the ruin articulate how loss itself becomes a form of knowledge, revealing how memory becomes visible through what no longer exists.
