SABRINA AMRANI GALLERY
SOUTH CIRCULAR- ONLINE EXHIBITION
Now that we know what it is like to live in confinement, now that we know about the silence that remains in the world when we do not inhabit it, the images of Mónica de Miranda make more sense than ever. Ruined, abandoned places where the hand of man stopped intervening years ago. Isolated people walking on worlds that do not belong to them, that never belonged to them. People in silence, only accompanied by the sound of the media. Does that sound familiar to us?
FotoFest has revealed the artists participating in its upcoming biennial, “African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other,” taking place in Houston from March 8 to April 19, 2020. Curated by Mark Sealy, director of the London-based photographic art institution Autograph ABP, the festival will examine the complex relationships between contemporary life in Africa, the African diaspora, and the global histories of colonialism, photography, and rights and representation, and will highlight artists who confront and challenge images of the Western canon.
The current exhibition of the artist and researcher is part of the Post-Archive project, which involves the creation of a digital archive with documents, videos, audio and photography, gathered within the scope of her extensive research on the relationships established between migrations, associated with the decolonization and the African independence movements in the creation of the and Europe’s urban landscapes. At the same time, tales of Lisbon marks the donation of the artist’s work archive, consisting of 239 raw images that depict informal neighborhoods on the former Military Road, to the Municipal Archive of Lisbon. Mónica de Miranda’s archive gathers images captured over more than a decade of research in the neighborhoods of Talude, Azinhaga dos Besouros, Fim do Mundo , Mira Loures, 6 de Maio and other neighborhoods located on the outskirts of the city.
The exhibition Tales of Lisbon arises from this visual archive created over a decade, but it is much more than the photographic collection of these neighborhoods,” it is a polymorphic object, a continuation of that initial archive composed of photographs ”, describes curator Bruno Leitão in the text accompanying the project. The curator continues: “The artist immerses herself in an inquisitive and humanizing process in these places and,
by fictionalizing these spaces, creates an exercise in empathy.
A possibility of emotionally recognizing a Lisbon outside the center, but that asserts itself inside ”. At the Lisbon Photographic Archive, Mónica de Miranda presents a set of photography and video works, mostly new works such as Tales of Lisbon (2020), Timeline (2020) and Twin Towers (2020), as well as the video Estrada Militar ( 2009), created in the initial phase of his research.
Collective exhibition of contemporary art curated by Katia Canton and the presence of some works by Lusophone artists: Beth Moysés, Rosana Paulino, Domingos Mazzilli, Cristina Ataíde, Teresa Milheiro and Mónica de Miranda. It is the first exhibition of a cycle of three of MIMA – International Women’s Museum, which will be the first museum in the world dedicated to the ethical production, aesthetics and thought generated by women in the Lusophone world, including those who inhabit the four continents.
Part of the exhibition Taxidermy of the future with Kiluanje Kia Henda and Grada Kilomba curated by Paula Nascimento and Bruno Leitão
Beauty by Mónica de Miranda (2018)
HD video, sound, 6″
The short film Beauty was shot at the Académie des Beaux Arts and the Tour de l’Échanger in Kinshasa and is originally part of an installation that borrows dramatic arts elements to stage and narrate aesthetic and social relations still present in the contemporary societies, referencing the Past and the construction of the present. The artist Chullage collaborated in the soundscape.
The curatorial proposal aims to bring into play the tension between the traditional concept of landscape – the one that represents nature in its pure and wild state – and contemporary artistic productions around it.
In this sense, the landscape today is the object of the critical look of the artist with a bias that challenges the observer and his reality. In this way, through different formats and materialities, the abstraction and reconstruction of the landscape in the networks, the urban horizon, the perspective of an insurmountable panorama due to the violence along with the complaints regarding the use and abuse of the natural environment.
The In(sul)ar project marks the dichotomy between reality and fiction, by creating meta-images of an imagined island, where time and space are confused with each other. The project consists of a video, sound and photography installation, and ascertains the territory of the Azores as an Atlantic place, which exists at the crossroads between Europe and Africa. In(sul)ar is a work of investigation and artistic creation that reflects the relation between space, memory and history, as well as the mapping of the body and its relation with the architecture, and the identity.
The project develops these concepts around the islands of the archipelago of the Azores, based on the representation of the landscape and its relation with architecture. Therefore, the work accentuates the duality between the ruin of the tourist and colonial project, represented here by the disruptive presence of the Hotel Monte Palace, which contrasts with the romantic idea of a tropical landscape.
This is a project that also arises from a residence developed with the artist Sounslikenuno (Chullage), based on the construction of sound.
Walk&Talk returns to São Miguel between 5 – 20 July and in its ninth edition, the festival welcomes more than fifty artists, collectives and curators, presents dozens of new projects that cross art, dance, performance, architecture, design, cinema and music, and builds a new temporary pavilion designed by Artworks & GA Studio.
The program is organized around art circuits that extend to various localities and spaces of the island, hosts artistic residences, exhibitions, shows, concerts, talks, initiatives dedicated to knowledge and parallel events.
Curated by Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues, the circuit explores the idea of “identity” in its relationship with gender, history, landscape, architecture, archeology and other fields of the sciences, to reflect the actions of the collective in the construction of the geographical “place” , at the same time social, cultural and emotional, synthesis and container of fluid and autonomous identities.
The exhibition that will be presented by the artist was develop as a residency in March 2019 with the support of Pico do Refúgio and in collaboration with the artist SoundsLikeNuno (Chullage) that will develop the sound design of the video to be exhibited at the festival.
A group presentation showcasing works by Joël Andrianomearisoa, Manal AlDowayan, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Timothy Hyunsoo Lee, Alexandra Karakashian and Mónica de Miranda.
Being part of the 13th edition of the EDP Foundation New Artists Award, Circular do Sul (South Circular) is a research, photography and video project that builds a narrative around the former Lisbon Military Road and reflects urbanism, immigration and decolonization processes.
The video develops a narrative between reality and fiction as a journey that traces, like an archaeological search, the landscape of the former Military Road of Lisbon. Built around the city in the 19th century, it rescues the memories of fragile and lost places in the peripheries of contemporary Lisbon.
This work was produced from a collaboration with social associations, residents of these neighborhoods , friends and family, artists and in collaboration with Teatro Griot and Sound design Soundslikenuno (Chullage).