Deprecated shortcode. Use “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 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) For the first time, Mónica de Miranda’s work will be on display in Australia. The exhibition at Ames Yavus Gallery was curated by Ananya Mukhopadhyay. MEMORY/MYTH is a program of films and video installations borne from distinct yet overlapping experiences of indigeneity, diaspora and the intersecting global legacies of colonialism. Through contemporary and historic works by a group of acclaimed international artists, Ames Yavuz presents a conversation between kindred spirits — authors united by their shared inheritance of landscapes and stories ravaged by the imperial project. The extensive lacunae in such histories are visited by these artists as sites for both mourning and discovery, while also being generative spaces for myth-making, fantasy and the curative contemplation of possible futures. Highlight works in the program include Blinded by the very force it imagined it could handle, by celebrated photographer-filmmakers Donovan Wylie and Peter Mann, marking the first time the video installation will be shown outside of Ireland. Mónica de Miranda, a prominent Portuguese artist currently representing her nation at the Venice Biennale, will showcase The Island (A Ilha), commissioned by Autograph, London. Image credits: Mónica de Miranda, The Island (A Ilha), Film Still, 2022. “As if the world has no West” will premiere at Exposed Torino. The movie proposes the creation of new landscapes by investigating hidden, yet metaphysically present ecologies in Angola, deconstructing western understandings of memory, history, and land. The project enquires in the work of anthropologist Augusto Zita investigations in the Namibia desert, in which he devised a nature-oriented space/time system having light as a third dimension. This work will bring forward this research , while deconstructing the understanding of land and looking at the land as a place of mutual care and liberation, As if the world had no west reveals nonwestern configurations of landscape. EXPOSED is Turin’s new international festival of photography, which every year will bring temporary exhibitions, a specialised fair, educational activities, meetings, artistic commissions and off-site events centered around a theme to the Piedmontese capital in May. Promoted by the City of Turin, the Piedmont Region, the Turin Chamber of Commerce, Intesa Sanpaolo, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT on behalf of Fondazione CRT and organised by Fondazione per la Cultura Torino, EXPOSED was created to strengthen the deep bond between Turin and photography. Photographies of the african diaspora in Lisbon (1975-today). Temporary exhibition, curated by Filipa Lowndes Vicente and Inocência Mata, bringing together photographs depicting the self-representation of the African diaspora in Portugal. These are “family albums” featuring images that Afro-Portuguese and African individuals have captured of themselves and their communities since 1975, when African countries gained independence from Portuguese colonization. Image credits: Born and Die from the series Field Works, Mónica de Miranda The 14th iteration of Black Portraitures (BP) will take place over two days during the vernissage of the 60th Anniversary of the Venice Biennale. This year’s theme, Shifting Paradigms, will center thought leaders from Africa and the African Diaspora who are creating new models for the education, cultivation, exhibition, dissemination, and collection of art and images. The aim of the conference aligns well with the Venice Biennale’s theme, Foreigner’s Everywhere. Panelists will include a transnational list of artists, curators, art historians, writers, educators, collectors, gallerists, architects, and designers who use the experience of Blackness to facilitate new systems of knowledge within the field of art and storytelling. This version of BP will break new ground in numerous fields such as exhibition making, visual studies, art history, cultural criticism, the art market, urban planning, and Africana Studies. PANEL: Greenhouse is a project developed by Mónica de Miranda, Sónia Vaz Borges and Vânia Gala. The project is grounded in interconnections of practice, theory, and pedagogy, presenting the exhibition space as a place of experimentation and reflection. The curatorial and artistic team – including a visual artist, a choreographer and a researcher – proposes collective actions through pedagogy, sound and movement that reflect on the relationship between nature, ecology and politics. The project undertakes the deconstruction of the very epistemology of the exhibition space and the hierarchical binaries of curator and artist, thought and practice, human and nature. The garden becomes a space for continuous, dialogical creation between the artists and the public. La Biennale di Venezia was established in 1895 and is today acknowledged as one of the most prestigious cultural institutions. La Biennale di Venezia stands at the forefront of research and promotion of new contemporary art trends and organizes events in all its specific Departments: Art (1895), Architecture (1980), Cinema (1932), Dance (1999), Music (1930), and Theatre (1934) – alongside research and training activities.
Bissaya Barreto Museum
Archives, Collections and Curating, April 21 from 9:00 – 10:15 AM This conversation will foreground the ways in which the processes of acquiring, maintaining and caring for cultural objects has subverted misconceptions about the lack of Black and
African history, and created new modes to engage with material, textual and visual culture. Liz Andrews is the moderator for this panel with Paul Ninson, LeRonn Brooks, Steven Booth, Alberta Whittle, and Mónica de Miranda as the panelists.