Project a Black Planet explores the influence of Pan-Africanism on artistic and cultural production from the 1920s to today, featuring over 300 works including paintings, installations, posters, journals, and films. Pan- Africanism encompasses movements advocating anti-colonial resistance and solidarity among people of African descent. The exhibition highlights the critical role of artists in shaping Pan-African visions, with work from across Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, North America, and Western Europe. Monica de Miranda is among the artists contributing to this exploration of Panafrica as a conceptual space where rupture, dissent, and collective imagination converge in pursuit of emancipatory futures.
©️ still from The Path to the Stars (2022) by Mónica de Miranda
Aligned with the theme of this year’s Triennial of Photography Hamburg, Mónica de Miranda’s works explore the intersections of identity, memory, and relational landscapes. Through her photographic practice, she examines how personal and collective histories shape the ways we encounter others, creating visual narratives that highlight connection, empathy, and the infinite interplay between the self and land. Her images lie within the Triennale’s reflection on human bonds, emphasizing care, dialogue, and the ethical responsibility of witnessing the other.
©️ Above the Line (2024) from As if the World had no West series by Mónica de Miranda
Mónica de Miranda will be one of this year’s artists in residence at the Sertão Negro Studio and School of Arts. Within this context of collective creation and exchange, her participation will further develop her research on ecologies of belonging, memory, and territory, engaging with the landscape of the sertão and local communities. The residency offers a space for experimentation and dialogue, where her practice intersects with situated knowledge and collaborative processes.
©️ Courtesy of Sertão Negro Studio and School of Arts
For the group show The Tirailleur Trials and Tribulations, at HKW, Mónica de Miranda presents The Spell Stone is a multi-screen video installation that reimagines Angolan liberation through layered, research-driven storytelling, intertwining memory, resistance, and the recovery of voices long silenced by official histories. Featuring documentary testimonies from freedom fighters who participated in Angola’s armed struggle for independence and the subsequent civil war, the work unfolds within a sculptural structure inspired by the Black Star — a symbol of African freedom and unity — transforming the space into both a memorial and a site of dialogue. The installation expands the exhibition’s decolonial narrative, tracing a continuum of anti-colonial resistance across geographies and generations.
©️ still from The Spell Stone (2026) by Mónica de Miranda
The exhibition reflects on landscape as a territory in constant transformation, bringing together different generations, artistic languages and contemporary themes. Rooted in specific geographies yet resonating across cultures, it suggests that landscape is shaped by memory, history and perception as much as by physical space. Mónica de Miranda participates in this group show, fostering an open dialogue between art, culture and territory. Inspired by a poem by Manuel Gusmão, the title evokes the idea that landscape — like art — is never fixed, but continually transformed by place, time and the gaze of the viewer.
©️ Untitled (City-Scape series) by Mónica de Miranda (2017)
In September, The Monastery of Leça do Balio inaugurates the exhibition People in Motion. Curated by Roberto Cremascoli, the exhibition is a contemporary reflection on migration, belonging and empathy, exploring what moves us as people and communities. During the artistic itinerary, Mónica presents Greenhouse, a Creole garden that combines sculpture, stage, installation and meeting space.
©️Still from Transplanting by Mónica de Miranda (2024)
The Center of Modern Art Gulbenkian open its doors again to the public and with it the exhibition Tide Line (Linha de Maré) where my work Path to the Stars will be showcased.
‘Tide Line’ starts from the Revolution of 25 April 1974 to reach the present day, reflecting on the ongoing revolutions, most importantly those related to the state of the planet.
Organised around large installations, the exhibition corresponds, in a fluid way, to a group of ideas that framed the choice of works: transgression (in relation to the Portuguese dictatorship), manifesto (the first Portuguese artistic ecological manifesto), interiority (of the experience proposed by the artwork), mutation (technological, post-human) and evocation (of a real connection with the living world).
Of the approximately 80 works on display, many are recent acquisitions never before shown at CAM, including Monica de Miranda’s Path to the Stars, incorporated to the museum’s collection on 2022.
Film Path to the Stars follows the journey, from dawn to dusk, of an Angolan freedom fighter las she travels by boat past the banks of the Kwanza River, the largest exclusively Angolan river, which flows into the Atlantic south of Luanda.
Along the banks of the river, the woman has several encounters with herself, as she becomes a woman of water, a woman of land, and finally, a woman of language. The bodies flow into each other through the water; metabolically, through the involvement with all living and inanimate elements of the water cycle; metaphorically, through the embodiment of states of mind and memories; or even symbolically, through the cultural construction which weaves the narrative along the banks of the Kwanza River.
A metaphor of a female place that threads through various times and spaces, a serene-faced woman intently observes the nature that surrounds her, while her body slowly merges with the watery currents of the river.
©️ Still from Path to the Stars (2022) by Mónica de Miranda