René Tavares (São Tomé, São Tomé and Príncipe, 1983) translates into traces, lines and stains a personal synthesis of his own identity, always in (unfinished) process, positioning himself in constant movement between present and older references. He is interested in deepening the permeability of the frontiers between stories, languages and techniques whilst sharing that exploratory path. René’s an artist that reflects in his own works, one’s own experience of contemporary displacement and relocation between the various areas of post-colonial contact. In much of his works, its noticeable what the artist calls as “l’imagerie comun”, a simple representation of an object or common form that is part of a pictorial space of pure abstraction and that allows the treatment of lines as a technique of drawing and painting, in which, various references appear out of context, mixed and ambiguous, such as a transposition of memory. Lately, his work has assumed a political/cultural reality and through which the artist calls attention for the everyday reality, bringing memorable references of identity for a contemporary context. Impartially intervenes on the development of social and political mentality, not by means of a desire for political discourse, but due to politics being a necessary regime in the everyday reality. Graduated at the School of Fine Arts in Dakar, Senegal. In 2008/09 won a scholarship at the École de Beaux Arts de Rennes (France) for the development of its own visual arts research in Rennes (France), and integrated in parallel the course of photography of ARC/Rennes project. In 2011, attends the master’s degree in arts and Heritage Sciences, at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon. Has exhibited in Saint Tomé, Lisbon, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Luanda, Johannesburg and New York. Participated in 2008 at the collective exhibition “Africa Now” in Washington, organized by the World Bank and in 2015 integrated the International Exhibition Lumières d’Afrique, at the Palais Chaillot in Paris, France. More recently, was nominated for the “Africa’s Most Influential New Artist Talent | FNB”, Joburg Art Fair 2018. Currently, living and working between Saint Tomé and Lisbon, Portugal.

Works

Mionga House, 2014

Mionga House, René Tavares & Kwame Sousa, HD video, colour, sound, 9′ 7”, 2014

The project is conceived in a traditional perspective, researching the relationship between the communities of the Island of Sao Tome, its history, its way of life and the individual features that define the building space and the surrounding space.

The definition of modern architecture passes fundamentally through a plastic association of the materials inserted and adopted in a space where the living experience is defined by the passage of the history that in a very singular form identifies the culture  of a people.

The angular community is derived from a group of slaves who arrived at the south of the island of Sao Tome after a shipwreck, and there they settled, according to the story, even before the arrival of the Portugese.

They made of the sea their great source of wealth and from the sea they arrived at other parts of the island. They have their palafitas¹ as almost disposable items, completely adequate to their needs. The Angolares reinvented, with few resources and information, a type of architecture that has persisted throughout time by using only local materials.

For this project, we were inspired by the way in which the natural resources are used and the form as the involving space is also part of the house space, with all its materials, which make us think of a kind of rejection of historical styles of modern architecture.

There is, however, a conscientious use in these materials, mainly wood, and the rationalization of the offer of the resources mentioned, taking advantage of the abundance of the surrounding nature.

The film tends to explore the details of the architectural design of the community and to highlight the ordinary plastic elements that characterize popular culture in the heart of the Sao Tome community. In a historical perspective it also interests us, through this video, to question the creation of the Angular society and its rejection, in almost a dismissal of everything that didn’t connect it to its origins of ‘departure’ and ‘arrival’, where the sea has a fundamental presence.

¹ Palafitas [houses built on stilts]