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BOOK LAUNCH | ATLANTICA: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM MOZAMBIQUE AND ITS DIASPORA

BOOK LAUNCH | ATLANTICA: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM MOZAMBIQUE AND ITS DIASPORA

©️Telling Time: From Compound to City (video still), 2014

Info

Title

BOOK LAUNCH | ATLANTICA: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM MOZAMBIQUE AND ITS DIASPORA

Participants

Open to all publics

Location

Zoom

Dates

January 20th, 2021 – 7pm

Information

hangarcia.production@gmail.com

About

ATLANTICA: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM MOZAMBIQUE AND ITS DIASPORA marks the second publication by the Hangar Books publisher, specializing in publications in the context of contemporary arts, focusing on southern epistemologies.

Talk mediated by the curator Bruno Leitão with the artists Ângela Ferreira, Camila Maissune and Eugénia Mussa, the researcher Ana Balona, the curators Azu Nwagbogu and Rafael Mouzinho.

Organized by Mónica de Miranda.

ATLANTICA is a book about contemporary art from Mozambique and its diaspora, the book brings together fourteen visual artists and theoretical essays from curators and academics. Considering the art production of the new millennium in Mozambique, the book reflects the diversity of histories and artistic visions, bringing together a variety of formats and writing genres within the book, which reflects the diversity of the authors’ backgrounds.

Contemporary art practices that have emerged in, or engaged with this region, are in themselves tools of resistance and rebellion, and are, as such, central to the decolonization strategies that artists have used to understand, analyse and resist the socio-economic impact of everyday events and their own personal realities.
Book edited by Ângela Ferreira and coordinated by Mónica de Miranda.

Artists: Maimuna Adam, Filipe Branquinho, Jorge Dias, Ângela Ferreira, Gemuce, Eurídice Kala, Camila Maissune, Gonçalo Mabunda, Mário Macilau, Celestino Mudaulane, Félix Mula, Eugénia Mussa, Marilú Námoda, Mauro Pinto

Essays: Storm Janse Van Rensburg, Raquel Schefer, Álvaro Luis Lima, Alda Costa, Drew Thompson, António Pinto Ribeiro, Ana Balona de Oliveira, Afonso Dias Ramos, Nomusa Makhubu, João Silvério, Maria do Mar Fazenda, Rui Assubuji, Nkule Mabaso, Paula Nascimento, Dellinda Collier, Azu Nwagbogu, Sihle Motsa

The book is a co-edition HANGAR – CEC and has the support of the Dgartes – Direcção Geral das Artes, Centro de Estudos Comparatistas, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, Fundação PMLJ, CIEBA – Centro de Investigação e de Estudos em Belas-Artes and Orfeu Negro.

This project was produced with national funding from the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the project UID/ELT/00509/2020.

ANA BALONA DE OLIVEIRA is FCT Researcher (CEEC 2017) at the Institute for Art History of the New University of Lisbon (IHA-FCSH- NOVA), where she co-coordinates the cluster ‘Transnational Perspectives on Contemporary Art: Identities and Representation’, and Collaborating Researcher at the Centre for Comparative Studies of the University of Lisbon (CEC-FLUL). She has lectured in several institutions in Portugal and the United Kingdom, where she received her PhD (Fort/Da: Unhomely and Hybrid Displacements in the Work of Ângela Ferreira, c. 1980-2008, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2012). Her research focuses on colonial, anti- and post- colonial narratives, migration and globalization in contemporary art from ‘Lusophone’ countries and beyond, in an intersectional and decolonial feminist perspective. She published articles in Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Third Text, African Arts, etc.; co-edited the volumes Diálogos com Ruy Duarte de Carvalho (2019), Atlantica: Contemporary Art from Angola and its Diaspora (2018), etc.; contributed essays and interviews to the exhibition catalogues Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art (2017), Novo Banco Photo 2015, etc., and the volumes Revolution 3.0: Iconographies of Radical Change (2019), (Re)Imagining African Independence: Film, Visual Arts and the Fall of the Portuguese Empire (2017), Red Africa: Affective Communities and the Cold War (2016), Edson Chagas: Found Not Taken (2015), etc. She curated the solo exhibitions Edson Chagas: Oikonomos (CCP, Luanda, 2019), Ângela Ferreira: Underground Cinemas & Towering Radios (Galeria Av. da Índia, Lisbon, 2016), Ângela Ferreira: Monuments in Reverse (CAAA, Guimarães, 2015); co-curated the collective exhibition Ruy Duarte de Carvalho: A Delicate Zone of Commitment (Galeria Quadrum, Lisbon, 2015-2016), etc.; and organized the talk series Artistic Migrations in and beyond Lisbon (Hangar, Lisbon, 2015- 2016) and Thinking from the South: Comparing Post-Colonial Histories and Diasporic Identities through Artistic Practices and Spaces (Hangar, Lisbon, 2018).

ÂNGELA FERREIRA born in 1958 in Maputo, Mozambique, grew up in South Africa and obtained her MFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She lives and works in Lisbon, teaching Fine Art at Lisbon University, where she obtained her doctorate in 2016. Ferreira’s work is concerned with the ongoing impact of colonialism and post-colonialism on contemporary society, an investigation that is conducted throught in-depth research and distillation of ideias into concise and resonant forms. She represented Portugal at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, continuing her investigations into the ways in which European modernism to adapted or failed to adapt to the realities of the African continent by tracing the history of Jean Prouvé’s’ Maison Tropicale’. Architecture also serves as a starting point for the deepening of her long research on the erasure of colonial memory and the refusal of reparation, which finds its most complex materialization in A Tendency to Forget (2015) focusing on ethnographic work of the couple Jorge and Margot Dias. The Pan African Unity Mural (2018), exhibited at the Maat Museum Lisbon and Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden was conceived, retrospectively and introspectively, for the “here” and the “now”. In addition to its own trajectory, other biographical stories are simultaneously narrated, exposed and hidden in this work. In Dalaba: Sol d’Exile (2019) a work focused on Miriam Makeba, one of the most prominent figures in the struggle against apartheid, Ferreira created sculptural pieces based on the architectural elements of the exile building where Makeba lived in Conakri, almost like a prototype of the relationship between modernist and African vernacular architectures. Her sculptural, sound and videographic homages have continuously referenced economic, political and cultural history of the African continent whilst recuperating the work and image of unexpected figures like Peter Blum, Carlos Cardoso, Ingrid Jonker, Jimi Hendrix, Jorge Ben Jor, Jorge dos Santos, Diego Rivera or Miriam Makeba.

Selected works: Dalaba: Sol d’Exile (2019); Pan African Unity Mural (2018); Remining (2017); Talk Tower for Diego Rivera (2017); Boca (2016); Wattle and Daub (2016); Hollows Tunnels, Cavities and more… (2016); A Tendency to Forget (2015); Wild Decolonization (2015); Messy Colonialism (2015); Revolutionary Traces (2014); SAAL Brigades (2014); Independance Cha Cha (2014); Entrer dans la mine (2013); Mount Mabu (2013); Stone Free (2012); Political Cameras (from Mozambique series) (2012); Collapsing Structures/ Talking Buildings (2012); Cape Sonnets (2010/2012); For Mozambique (2008).

AZU NWAGBOGU is the Founder and Director of African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), a non- profit organisation based in Lagos, Nigeria. Nwagbogu was elected as the Interim Director/ Head Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in South Africa from June 2018 to August 2019. Nwagbogu also serves as Founder and Director of LagosPhoto Festival, an annual international arts festival of photography held in Lagos. He is the creator of Art Base Africa, a virtual space to discover and learn about contemporary African Art. Nwagbogu was a juror for the Dutch Doc, POPCAP Photography Awards, the World press Photo, Prisma Photography Award (2015), Greenpeace Photo Award (2016), New York Times Portfolio Review (2017-18), W. Eugene Smith Award (2018), Photo Espana (2018), Foam Paul Huf Award (2019), Wellcome photography prize (2019) and is a regular juror for organizations such as Lensculture and Magnum.
For the past 20 years, he has curated private collections for various prominent individuals and corporate organisations in Africa. Nwagbogu obtained a Masters in Public Health from The University of Cambridge. He lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria

BRUNO LEITÃO was born in Lisbon in 1979 and lives between Madrid and Lisbon.
He is the curatorial director of Hangar – Artistic Research Center. At Hangar he has curated and organized several exhibitions, including Cuaderno de Ejercicios by Luis Camnitzer (2019), Ilha de Vénus de Kiluanji Kia Henda (2018); Cubismo Ideológico by Carlos Amorales (2017); Plagiarizing the Future, co-curated with Andrea Rodríguez Novoa, with artists Edouard Decam, Elena Bajo, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, Jordi Colomer, Letícia Ramos, Louidgi Beltrame, Marlon de Azambuja and Rosa Barba (2016); Untitled by João Onofre and Principio Tautológico with Igor Jesus, Sara and André, Cristina Garrido, Javier Núñez Gasco, João Paulo Serafim, João Ferro Martins, Daniel Barroca, Paolo Chiasera and Los Torreznos (2015).
As an independent curator, he recently curated Taxidermy of the Future at the Natural History Museum of Angola and the Lubumbashi Biennial (Lubumbashi, R.D.Congo, 2019); Pouco a Pouco, Ângela Ferreira’s first solo exhibition in Spain at CGAC (Santiago de Compostela, 2019); Affective Utopia at the Kadist Foundation (Paris, 2019) with artists Sammy Baloji & Filip De Boeck, Luis Camnitzer, Ângela Ferreira, Alfredo Jaar, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Grada Kilomba, Reynier Leyva Novo and Paulo Nazareth; Topology of the Aura with Carles Congost, Javier Núñez Gasco, Igor Jesus, Sara and André at the Bacelos gallery (Madrid, 2016); El Buen Caligrama at The Goma Gallery (Madrid, 2015); You Love Me, You Love Me Not at the Porto Municipal Gallery (Porto, 2015); Atelier Utopia in Porto EDP Foundation (2012); Contr/act at 3 + 1 Arte Contemporânea (Lisbon, 2014); among others.
He has contributed to several magazines and catalogs. Among them, we highlight Atlantica: Contemporary arts from Angola and its diaspora (Hangar Books), The Gap (curated by Luc Tuymans at Parasol Unit, London, and Mukha, Antwerp), Atlántica magazine, Dardo Magazine, Artishock (Chile) and Artecapital.

CAMILA MAISSUNE (Mozambique, 1984), is a visual artist; she holds a B.A. in Social Sciences with a focus in Visual Anthropology and an M.A. and PhD in Visual Culture. Exploring themes concerning “Image, Culture and Production of Meaning”, she is a research member of the “Interdisciplinary Studies of Images” group held within the Art and Visual Culture programme at the Federal University of Goiânia (UFG, Brazil). Her main research topics include: arts and ethnography, landscapes, memory and identity. She has participated in several collective exhibitions in Mozambique, Portugal, Brazil and Cape Verde. Her current research is focused on aesthetics and policies of the Indian Ocean in contemporary arts and photography.

EUGÉNIA MUSSA (1978) was born in Maputo, Mozambique, and began her studies in visual art at City & Islington College, London, before training as a painter at Ar.Co in 2009. That same year she was one of the finalists for the Anteciparte Prize (2009). In 2010, she received an honorable mention in the exhibition held to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Banco de Moçambique. In 2013, she held a solo exhibition at the Espaço Arte Tranquilidade and showed her work at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Galeria João Esteves Oliveira, where she still exhibits regularly to this day. Her artistic practice evinces an abiding concern with rethinking the history of artistic movements in painting. She currently lives in Lisbon and her works can be found in private and institutional collections and you can currently see her work at the Modern Collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

MÓNICA DE MIRANDA is an artist and researcher. Her work is based on themes of urban archaeology and personal geographies. Mónica has a visual art degree from Camberwell College of arts (London, 1998); a master’s degree in art and education at the Institute of Education (London, 2000) and a PhD in visual art from the University of Middlesex (London, 2014). She has received the support from the Foundation for Science and Technology. She is currently developing her research project: Post- archive at CEC (Centre of Comparative Studies, University of Lisbon) .
Mónica is one of the founders of the artistic project of residences Triangle Network in Portugal and the founder of the Project Hangar (Center of artistic research in Lisbon, 2014). She was nominated for Novo Banco Photo prize and exhibited at Museu Berardo ( Lisbon, 2016). Mónica was also nominated for Prix Piclet Photo Award (2016). She also exhibited at Photo Paris (Paris,2013), Arco (Madrid, 2013), Arco Lisbon ( Lisbon, 2016).
Her solo exhibitions include: ” Arrivals and departures” (Palácio D. Manuel, Évora, 2016), “Hotel Globo” (Museu Nacional de arte contemporânea do Chiado, Lisbon, 2015) “Arquipélago” (Galeria Carlos Carvalho , Lisbon, 2014), “Erosion” (Appleton Square, Lisbon, 2013), “An Ocean Between Us” (Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon, 2012); “Novas Geografias” (198 Gallery, London / Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon / Imagem HF, Amsterdam, 2008).

RAFAEL BORDALO MOUZINHO (1979) was born in Maputo, Mozambique, and began his relationship with the arts by taking a Ceramics course (1999-2005) at the Escola Nacional de Artes Visuais. Thereafter, he completed a Degree in Visual Arts at the Instituto Superior de Artes e Cultura (ISarC), in Maputo (2009- 2012), and has combined his practice as an artist with art curating, writing and teaching. Some
of the highlights of his artistic experience are his participation in Expo Arte Contemporânea (MUVART), at Museu Nacional de Arte (Mozambique: 2004 and 2006); Hora 0,
at Centro Cultural Franco-Moçambicano (Mozambique: 2005); Maputo: a tale of one city (Norway, Zimbabwe and Maputo: 2009- 2011); and Processo: A obra desafiando o artista at Galeria Kulunguana (Mozambique: 2014). He has contributed to the Justaposição project by choreographing the piece Centauros, showcased at the Festival Kinani (Mozambique: 2013), and This Ain’t Africa at Dialogues Africa Festival (Germany: 2014). He has published renowned articles for Atitudes e tendências estéticas, for the exhibition catalogue of Pedalando (Gemuce’s exhibition); Arte como
compromisso ético, the introduction for Félix Mula in the exhibition Processos: Artista, Obra e público na Galeria Kulunguana (Mozambique: 2014); and Barriga de Dragão in the book One million, Fourty years (and sixty three days), SMAC Gallery, South Africa. He has also written Nos escombros da memória and conducted
the following interviews: Uma conversa entre Rafael Mouzinho e Félix Mula; Ângela Ferreira: Uma conversa entre Alda Costa e Rafael Mouzinho; as well as the introductory catalogue for South Facing, Johannesburg Art Gallery (2017) and Third Text, Vol. 5, Mozambique (2018). Currently, he is an assistant curator at the Colecção de Arte/Galeria of the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane and teacher at a curating workshop at the Instituto Superior de Artes e Cultura (ISArC).