BUALA

Queens of the Undead, an exhibition of Kimathi Donkor

The first time I saw Rainha Nzinga of Matamba, I was walking across Luanda's Kinaxixi square with a friend. We stopped to admire the vast bronze tribute to the seventeenth-century Mbundu monarch, who not only fought Portuguese armies, but caused consternation among her own people and played a significant role in developing the Angolan slave trade. I was immediately impressed by the statue, although my friend, an Angolan journalist, was less so. 'In real life, you'd have seen her breasts,' he said, 'but they've been covered up to appease our modern sensibilities.'

Face to face

06.11.2012 | by Lara Pawson