TERESA KUTALA FIRMINO (b. 1993, Pomfret, South Africa)
“We heal by retelling our stories.”
Teresa Kutala Firmino’s work negotiates trauma both personal and collective in her everyday life.
Her paintings are constructed scenes of the past and present, which are sometimes intertwined. Kutala Firmino carefully collects images from magazines, newspapers, historical documents and social media, and places them in colourful, box-like stages. This creates surreally baroque scenes which take place in tightly confined interiors, where the characters have the opportunity to re-enact their stories or construct new ones. This process allows Kutala Firmino to create alternative past, present and future narratives of Africa, thus rebuilding her own archive of African history.
Kutala Firmino seeks to investigate the trauma that African people in her community and beyond have experienced and continue to experience due to colonization, civil wars and present day obstacles. Her own stories begin with the collective trauma of Pomfret. Located in the North West Province of South Africa, and the place where she was born, Pomfret is a community of former 32 Battalion soldiers and their families, many of whom settled there after the end of the South African Border War.
Kutala Firmino looks at how, despite the trauma they experienced, many of these women had to continue living with their abusers. The artist interrogates what it is about the black female body and mind which, despite trauma, continues to thrive. Is she truly living, or is she in constant melancholy as she exists in the aftermath of colonialism, civil war and betrayal? Is negotiating trauma realising that your abuser is possibly part the bigger of cycle of abuse?