OZANGÉ
With works from “Shadows fall behind” (2022) series by Mónica de Miranda
Curated by Owanto
The first edition of OZANGÉ, directed by the Gabonese-born visual artist Owanto, will be
held in different venues in Malaga from November 4, 2022 to January 29, 2023 before
traveling to other cities in Spain, Ivory Coast and Morocco.
Following in the footsteps of the great photography festivals in Africa that have given
many artists international renown, the Biennial is not only an exhibition space with the
presentation of a selection of the works of current photographers from the continent and
the diaspora, but it is also conceived as a new space for this new generation of
photographers who are beginning their entry into the European art market.
Future Archives
By Mónica de Miranda
Curated by Azu Nwagbogu
Given the current global turn since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, it is essential to
test our previous ideas produced in various previous art formats and explore its efficacy in
raising possible questions about their relevance as archives for the future. Institutions are
complex and can be violent spaces. They normalise situations based on power dynamics
that are inherited and passed on from generation to generation. We investigate the
readiness for the current dystopian conditions to foster new ideas that aim to create
narratives that produce empathy, understanding and collaboration.
Africa Art Museum
The exhibition Europa Oxalá presents works by 21 European artists, all second of third generation. These artists, born and raised in a post-colonial context, reflect on their heritage, their memories and their identities.
Their artistic productions feed into an original reflection on racism, the decolonisation of the arts, the status of women in contemporary society, and even the deconstruction of colonial thought.
Curated by António Pinto Ribeiro, Katia Kameli, Aimé Mpane
Fotofest – African Cosmologies Redux
with works from “City-scapes” series by Monica de Miranda
Curated by Mark Sealy
African Cosmologies: Redux is an adaptation of the postponed FotoFest Biennial 2020
exhibition, African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, featuring artists included in
the original iteration of that exhibition and complemented by a series of programs.
Curated by Mark Sealy, Director of the renowned London-based photographic art
institution Autograph ABP, African Cosmologies: Redux is a large-scale group exhibition that
examines the complex relationships between contemporary life in Africa, the African
diaspora, and global histories of colonialism, photography, and rights and representation.
The exhibition considers the history of photography as one closely tied to a colonial
project and Western image production, highlighting artists who confront and challenge this
shortsighted, albeit canonized lineage
Construir o tempo
By Monica de Miranda
Curated by Suzana Sousa
“The link between memory and geography plays an important role in Mónica de Miranda’s
work, drawing our attention to the process of memory construction and the way
geography is permeated by elements such as architecture or the affections. Evidencing the
concrete history of space and establishing a web of relationships and transits between the
particular and the public, the national and the transnational or collective memory and
intimate archive. In this web, memory, much less linear than history, is constructed from a
whisper, a lament after departure, a memory that is repeated so many times it becomes a
tale.” – by Suzana Sousa
Caminho para as estrelas
By Mónica de Miranda
Curated by Paula Nascimento
“”Caminho para as estrelas” reflects the dialectical relationships between past, present and
future through creative engagement with historical traces to project and imagine new
futures. It presents a worldview that tends towards new ways of understanding human
subjectivity, advancing the necessary discussion around the relations between human
dimensions, such as language and politics, and the environment in which we live.”
– by Paula Nascimento
The film Path to the stars is produced by Geração 80, supported by The Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Jahmek Contemporary Art, Carlos Carvalho Arte
Contemporânea and Beyond Entropy. Music and composition by Xullaji
Mirages and deep time
By Monica de Miranda
Curated by Azu Nwagbogu
“Monica De Miranda explores a multi-media exhibition, Mirages and Deep Time through her characters, embodied personages from photographs, moving images and embroidered printed matter. These characters manifest as a form of intervention that bring her messaging on the materialising new world order emergent from the dissolution of the past histories into new histories as human activity shapes the evolving world. This so called anthropocene has created multiple time lines and for the artist de Miranda, the artist the artefacts of our time can never be reduced to mediums, illustration and narratives. All of these converge into Mirages and Deep Time and are embodied through her characters. There is a great reveal with this showing as identities and obfuscated narratives ostensibly crop-up from her visual cues and metaphors.” by Azu Nwagbogu
The Island
By Monica de Miranda
Curated by Renée Mussai and Mark Sealy
The Island contemplates the complex experiences of Afrodiasporic lives and Europe’s colonial past. Fusing fact and fiction, The Island explores a long trajectory of black presences in Portugal by bringing together intertwined narratives, African liberation movements, migratory experiences, and identity formations through a black feminist lens.
The exhibition features two new Autograph artist commissions seen for the first time: a 35-minute film work The Island, and an associated photographic series part of Autograph’s 2021 project ‘Amplify – Stranger in the Village: Afro European Matters’, supported by the Art Fund.
Berlin Biennale
With works from “Path to the stars” by Monica de Miranda
Curated by Kader Attia in collaboration with Ana Teixeira Pinto, Đỗ Tường Linh, Marie Helene Pereira, Noam Segal, and Rasha Salti.
On the occasion of the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, titled Still Present!, artists from around the globe engage with the legacies of modernity and the resulting state of planetary emergency. In addition to their works, the exhibition features historical documents, including political and activist publications from the Archiv der Avantgarden Egidio Marzona (AdA). The contributions reveal connections between colonialism, fascism, and imperialism, and propose decolonial strategies for the future, oriented around a set of questions: How can a decolonial ecology be shaped? What role can non-Western feminist movements play in the reappropriation of historical narratives? How can the debate on restitution be reinvented beyond the return of plundered goods? Can the field of emotion be reclaimed through art?
The film Path to the stars is produced by Geração 80, supported by The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Jahmek Contemporary Art, Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea and Beyond Entropy. Music and composition by Xullaji.
No longer with the memory but with its future
By Monica de Miranda
Curated by Paula Nascimento
The exhibition brings together a new body of work by Mónica de Miranda and is structured around a video work Path to the Stars (2022) that finds inspiration in Agostinho Neto’s homonymous poem and was shot in the River Kwanza, Angola’s longest river. The vitality and strength of the ecosystem of the river function as an analogy between the body and water and its relationship to history– the river is linked to the history of the Atlantic. The exhibition also features photographic work exploring the entanglements between femininity and nature and a text-based installation. Through an oppositional gaze towards history, Mónica’s works advance important discussions about belonging and future-making in the contemporary Anthropocene era.