“The Last Place They Thought Of”
This exhibition project brings together the work of the following artists: Lungiswa Gqunta, Soñ Gweha, Gaelle Choisne, Godelive Kasangati, Lou Cocody-Valentino, Michele Magema, Monica de Miranda, Zohra Opoku, MIMI Green and Melissandre Varin.
Entitled The Last Place They Thought of, this exhibition featuring installation, video, photography and drawing, aims to reflect on the possibility of a black conceptualization of geography, in opposition to what intellectual and essayist Kathrin McKittrick calls traditional geography. Drawing on the thinking and creations of these artists, the project seeks to explore and think about notions of territory and space from a black and female perspective. Thus, each of these artists, in their work, draw lines of territory from their position as black women, offering stories rarely told, making the opacity of the margin the starting point for a reconsideration of the concept of geography, also through the idea that everything is in relation. Then, by thinking of the territory in terms of Relation, concepts such as the body, nature, landscape and fugitivity can be explored, and the very thing we call geography disturbed. Indeed, it would be transformed by the total integration of what black lives, and more specifically, the lives of black women, have to contribute to the reading and production of space and place.
©️ Still from As if the World Had No West (2024) by Mónica de Miranda
The pressing nature of the debate on climate change aligns with the role of art in historical and social dynamics. This year’s project for Paris Photo celebrates the capacity of artists to be agents of cultural metamorphosis, shaping perceptions, provoking resistance, and instigating reform.
In Tiago Casanova’s works, documentary elements intertwine with metaphorical narratives to delve into the historical, symbolic, and ecological dimensions of São Tomé and Príncipe. Jessica Backhaus creates scenarios of everyday life, employing distinct perspectives and materials to blend reality with abstraction.
Mónica de Miranda’s new series challenges conventional paradigms, emphasizing the interaction between bodies and ecosystems. Roland Fischer’s works fuse geometric shapes with architectural complexities, offering viewers visual encounters that transcend conventional photography. “We are Melting” by Marguerite Bornhauser addresses the urgency of climate change debate through abstract imagery. With Jessica Backhaus, Marguerite Bornhauser, Tiago Casanova, Roland Fischer, Mónica de Miranda.
©️ Still from Greenhouse (2004) by Mónica de Miranda
“Colonial Memory, Wounded Civilization”
In his essay Discourse on Colonialism, Afro-descendant poet and politician Aimé Césaire pointed out that a civilisation that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a wounded civilisation. For him, in two centuries of bourgeois rule, Europe had been incapable of resolving the two major questions that had given rise to its existence: the question of the proletariat and the colonial question. More than seventy years have passed since the publication of that essay and Europe has still not resolved either of these issues.
Sunday, 29 September
10.00-11.35
Colonial Memory and the 60th Venice Biennale
The proposal in Block 3 is to present the artistic and curatorial experience of three of the national pavilions participating in the current 60th edition of the Venice Biennale; an event which has brought together an extraordinary variety of artistic practices – most of them operating from non-Eurocentric conceptual frameworks, imaginaries and worldviews – under the title Foreigners Everywhere. Two artists and a curator have been invited to talk about the work they have shared with the public in Venice. Marked by different diasporic processes, all three of them inhabit a multiple, multi-localised identity.
Introduction:
Andrea Pacheco González.
Panellists:
– Cindy Sissokho, curator of the Wellcome Collection, London.
– Mónica de Miranda, Portuguese-Angolan artist: “Curating the Living Archives”.
– Sandra Gamarra, Spanish-Peruvian artist: “Memoria Migrante”.
©️ Still from Greenhouse (2024) by Mónica de Miranda
The film Path to the Stars is part of the group show Tide Line which 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.
©️ Still from Path to the Stars film (2022)
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
“Free as They Want To Be: Artist Committed to Memory”
Free as They Want To Be: Artist Committed to Memory, an exhibition hosted by the The Clark Atlanta University Art Museum from September until December, 24 is featuring three works by Mónica de Miranda.
Co-curated by Dr. Cheryl Finley and Dr. Deborah Willis, Free as They Want To Be: Artist Committed to Memory is an exhibition of contemporary art inspired by historical memory through photography, video and archival materials. The exhibit asks how have these mediums impacted the afterlives of slavery in post emancipation America and the liberating power of photography (art) to define a free-self.
©️ Still from Beauty (2018) by Mónica de Miranda
“Path To The Stars”
Film and video gallery installation “Path to the Stars” (2022) explores the legacy of anti-colonial resistance in Angola through the metaphor of the river, an element that evokes ancient temporalities that cycle and spiral, challenging the triumphant teleologies of political discourse.
The video follows a female protagonist from dawn to dusk as she journeys down the Kwanza River. Eventually, she reaches the river’s mouth, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean and where the Portuguese invaded Angola in the late 16th century.
The Kwanza river is a living organism that carries within the history of Angola – the history of liberation struggle, the civil wars, the precolonial histories, and the stories of the ecological disasters that are happening in this contemporary period.
During her journey, the woman confronts her own “shadow self” through shifting moments in time. Past, present, and future bleed together through various scenes and characters connected to the river. The poetic journey is situated in a space of imagination and liberation that is at once real and utopian.
©️ Still from Path to the Stars (2022) by Mónica de Miranda
For the group show Le Sel Noir Mónica de Miranda presents photographs from her series Greenhouse. The exhibition is inspired by Glissant’s philosophical-theoretical approaches to multiculturalism, the exhibition presents international contemporary art that deals with black subjectivity – understood as an expression of identification, self-positioning and aesthetic agency. Curated by Dr. Alejandro Perdomo Daniels.
©️ O som do vento e a minha casa from the Greenhouse series by Mónica de Miranda (2024)
The Kwanza River – among the longest rivers in Angola that flows into the Atlantic Ocean – provided a point of entry for the Portuguese invasion in 1482. As the site of numerous battles of resistance and a natural force in its own right, the river prominently features as an symbol of independence – Angola’s currency Kwanza, is named after the river. Mónica de Miranda’s Path to the Stars (2022) revisits this legacy of anti-colonial resistance in Angola, inviting the audience on a journey through revolutionary history and futures-in-the-making. The title is taken from O Caminho das Estrelas (Path to the Stars) a 1953 poem by Agostinho Neto, a freedom fighter and the former president of Angola. Over the course of a single day, from sunrise to sunset, viewers follow the path of a heroine as she navigates the River. She confronts various avatars of her past – and of Angola’s struggle for independence from Portugal – along the way. This deeply poetic film traces lines of understanding about the meaning of stars. Miranda sheds light on the invisible and uncelebrated figures who took part in the struggle for Angolan independence – namely women – as well as the ecological resources they defended, especially the waterways that have borne witness to history, and continue to do so in the present.
Curated by Johanne Affricot and Eric Otieno Sumba.
Opening Wednesday, 17 July, 6:30 PM
Bissaya Barreto Museum
Bringing together a collection of works, the exhibition proposes a profound reflection on identity, memory, territory, and resistance. The artworks are fluidly articulated, revealing layers of meaning that intersect the body, space, and time, between the visible and the invisible, the past and the present, the individual and the collective.
©️ Twist from Tomorrow is Another Day series by Mónica de Miranda (2018)