"The Unbalanced Land" by Adrián Balseca

"The Unbalanced Land" by Adrián Balseca The title of the exhibition refers to Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development and, particularly, to its rereading by Harvey through the concept of “uneven geographical development”. If Marx considers that space is annihilated by time in the capitalist system, The Unbalanced Land carries out a reflection on the modalities of space production and the spatio-temporal relations in late capitalism.

21.05.2019 | by Raquel Schefer

(RE)MEMBERING / (FOR)GETTING by Rita GT

(RE)MEMBERING / (FOR)GETTING by Rita GT No centro de todos os poderes imperialistas, Portugal incluído, existiu sempre uma incrível habilidade para esquecer, uma fábrica incrível de esquecimento. A tarefa dos artistas, escritores e pensadores é de analisar este processo de ‘lembrar e esquecer’.

23.01.2019 | by George Shire

Interview with Myriame Morel-Deledalle, exhibition curator of Connectivities

Interview with Myriame Morel-Deledalle, exhibition curator of Connectivities This exhibition addresses the question of cities and their connectivity in the Mediterranean over two radically different time periods. The first section follows a well known historical and geographical sequence through time and space, the Mediterranean of the 16th and 17th centuries, by exploring the connections between six cities (three from the Hapsburg Empire, and three from the Ottoman Empire) which were allied, in opposition, or in a power dynamic of domination. Here the itinerary of the exhibition reflects the geographical space of the Mediterranean : visitors enter in the east by Istanbul, circulate towards Venice and Algiers, before approaching the western part of the Mediterranean, from Genoa to Seville, concluding in Lisbon, the opening to the Atlantic. In the second section, the exhibition presents the cities of the contemporary Mediterranean : two metropolises (Marseille and Casablanca) and two megacities (Istanbul and Cairo).

15.10.2018 | by vários

Nova Lisboa

Nova Lisboa Taking these portraits as a starting point, what segregation does is to create contradictory sentiments between the delectable nostalgia of a privileged minority and the disavowal of a brutally exploited majority. All of history can be interpreted in multiple ways, like a work of art, and in Jasse’s work the myriad readings available to the observer are left open in an approach that is utterly unpretentious.

14.09.2018 | by Kiluanji Kia Henda

Festa do Avante, although hidden, conflicts exist over all three days

Festa do Avante, although hidden, conflicts exist over all three days Creating this illusion of a post-utopian world that conceals war has a price: the absence in those three days and in that space of any type of explicit conflict, even contradiction: there is no place for the conflict of generations, gender, music, of tents of national and international producers, and so on.

09.09.2018 | by António Pinto Ribeiro

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Behind the Scenes at the Museum The newly modernised Central African Museum at Teruvren does not do away with the old, nor does it resolve the question of what purpose an African museum serves in Europe, today. Instead, those visiting when it re-opens will be confronted with the uneasy relationship between past and present that Tervuren will always embody - and with the lingering presence of King Leopold's ghost.

26.05.2018 | by Ana Naomi de Sousa

On "Learning to live with the enemy", by Pedro Neves Marques

On "Learning to live with the enemy", by Pedro Neves Marques Permanecemos incapazes de escutar e compreender o diálogo entre uma androide ameríndia e o milho transgénico – a quem pertence a humanidade, afinal de contas? Para a coexistência destas diferentes cosmologias – modernas, animistas ou tecnofílicas – não existe sonho ou ficção capaz de as apreender num todo, apenas a perceção de que o mundo lhes dá lugar incessantemente e que a posição de inimigo, mais do que a natureza ou a cultura, marca as suas fronteiras.

10.07.2017 | by Pedro Lapa

Panoramic in Moving Fragments, or Mónica de Miranda’s Twin Visions of (Un)Belonging

Panoramic in Moving Fragments, or Mónica de Miranda’s Twin Visions of (Un)Belonging Miranda’s work is deeply marked by family memories and experiences and, more broadly, by the collective histories of Portugal and Angola. In Panorama, her focus on the psychic and physical remnants of several pasts – colonial, post-independence, post-Cold War, post-civil war – within natural, urban and architectural landscapes of Luanda and beyond serves the larger purpose of examining the contradictions of the present and imagining alternative futures.

05.07.2017 | by Ana Balona de Oliveira

Looking After Freedom?

Looking After Freedom? The idea of freedom as a point of arrival – an accomplishment that lies behind us, materialized and monumentalized; freedom as a ballot, a single gesture hinged to a turning point; freedom carved in stone, set on a hill, allegorized in a recognizable form; freedom as a lofty place we ascend to, is one that can be counterpoised to freedom as departure, as work and process; an immaterial, contingent ideal; an ambition and responsibility which escapes and evades one’s grasp, but to which one continuously commits.

08.06.2017 | by Nancy Dantas

The Promised Land

The Promised Land For centuries enslaved Africans were taken to Europe and America to serve as workforce. These individuals were forced into submission and considered sub-human. They were brutalized and treated worse than animals by other individuals, and their institutions, which thought of themselves as civilized and modern. These enslaved men and women suffered and despaired, and dreamt of a life before, and of a land more familiar and kind. So, out of the insanity of misery and helplessness, they would eat the soil in the hope of being taken back to that time and land of before.

10.11.2016 | by Ana Rita Canhão

An interview with the Zimbabwean gallerist Jimmy Saruchera

An interview with the Zimbabwean gallerist Jimmy Saruchera For other mediums such as sound art and video art to gain traction in Afrika, I think they need to be taken out of the gallery or museum environment and put into the mobile environment where people are. This entails modifying the model of collecting, where alternative commercial models better suited to mobile consumption of content come to the fore. The onus is on these new art platforms in Afrika to look deep within their cultures and societies and innovate the mediums themselves to make art more relevant for their communities.

14.10.2015 | by Inês Valle

Brasil

Brasil BRASIL is a photobook project that is the result of eight years of photographing culture, landscape, architecture and the visual magic I found in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Salvador de Bahia. Made on analog film, the photographs are personal portraits that illuminate a fluid, syncopated, and complex contemporary Brazil, seen through the lens of my Rolleiflex camera.

30.09.2015 | by Kristin Capp

Lonesome Warriors. About Africa at the Olympic Winter Games

Lonesome Warriors. About Africa at the Olympic Winter Games The Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia started on February 7 with the Opening Ceremony, where 88 athletes bearing the flags of their respective nations led their national delegations into the Olympic Stadium. When a lonely man representing Zimbabwe entered on position 26, one could have asked two questions: Why is a Zimbabwean the 26th, if there is an alphabetical order? And, probably more interesting, what is a man from the southern Africa doing at Olympic Winter Games?

26.02.2014 | by Robin Nuss

Generative Indirections | Public Program

Generative Indirections | Public Program Researching the relations between ongoing artistic, social and political forms of life, Generative Indirections intends to explore the potentialities of performance studies in the critical space between the Social Sciences, Humanities and Art, and give voice to counter hegemonic epistemologies, blurring theory and practice. In-direction thus becomes a magnetic field, moving between theory and practice, challenging disciplinary boundaries in order to question how Performance Studies can be received in Portugal.

01.09.2013 | by Baldio

Luanda: Exhibition-Fair Angola 1938

Luanda: Exhibition-Fair Angola 1938  Two years before the Exhibition of the Portuguese World (“Exposição de Mundo Português”), a very large Exhibition-Fair was held in Luanda, that did not go down in colonial history. Its was meant to display the economic development of Angola in an "expressive and comprehensive documentary", rather than exalt the regime's historicist programme and imperial mystique - the norm with colonial exhibitions, such as the Historical Exhibition of the Occupation (“Exposição Histórica da Ocupação”) held in 1937, in the Eduardo VII Park in Lisbon.

23.03.2013 | by Alexandre Pomar

VELA 6911 - a multimedia piece by Victor Gama

VELA 6911 - a multimedia piece by Victor Gama Vela 691 is the code name of the US satellite that detected the nuclear blast performed by South Africa on the 22nd of September in 1979. The test was conducted in the South Atlantic off the cost of Antarctica. It's also the name of a new piece Victor Gama composed by invitation from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The piece was premiered during the concert series MusicNOW at Harris Theatre in Chicago on the 5th of March 2012 and was a result of an invitation from composers-in-residence Mason Bates and Anna Clyne.

07.01.2013 | by vários

tectonic:TOMBWA in the Namibe desert, southwest coast of Angola

tectonic:TOMBWA in the Namibe desert, southwest coast of Angola tectonik:TOMBWA is a project initiated by Victor Gama in the desert of Namibe, Angola, in 2006 with the aim of reconstructing and interpret professor Augusto Zita's research thesis “An anthropology of Utopia: formation of Utopian identities”. The project is based on his fragmented notes, and is intended to resurface his thoughts, concepts and refletions. For that aim Gama started an archive of some of the main items pointed out by prof. Augusto in his notes such as recordings of sounds collected with a specific device in the Namibe desert, photografs and videos of several features along the road from Namibe to Tombwa, as well as a collection of objects found laying on the ground, different types of sands, dryed leaves of plants and many other items.

05.01.2013 | by vários

Transatlantic connections: seas, memories and places in the work of Monica de Miranda

Transatlantic connections: seas, memories and places in the work of Monica de Miranda Travel in Monica de Miranda’s imagery becomes a metaphor for what Walter Mignolo calls ‘the colonial wound’: as a way to explore her multiple movements and those of her family through places linked by a common colonial matrix she builds her own emotional map in a variety of mediums. It could be argued that the stations chosen for her transit suggest a reflection on decolonization that in the Zapatistas’ terms would carry us towards a world that would fit many worlds: a proposal for a pluriversal -as in opposition to uni-versal - reading of reality.

27.11.2012 | by Gabriela Salgado

Making cultural inheritance the theme for contemporary artistic creation

Making cultural inheritance the theme for contemporary artistic creation he ROOTS project approaches the slavery theme through/from a contemporary vision inspired by an archeological discovery in 2008 in the “green circle” in Lagos at the location which was known as the “Vale da Gafaria” (Valley of the Leper Hospital). In the area rescue archeological excavations that preceded the construction of one of the city’s underground car parks enabled the methodological investigation of the whole area affected by the enterprise - one of the ex-libris of urban regeneration that the municipal administration was able to carry out in the decade of the XXI Century.

15.02.2012 | by Rui Parreira

Eight days, six nights: Diary of a first journey to Senegal and Sub-Saharan Africa

Eight days, six nights: Diary of a first journey to Senegal and Sub-Saharan Africa We land in Dakar at 2.30 in the morning. Looking from the plane at the Cap Vert peninsula, the map I had been studying for months now gains life. I know exactly where our hotel is. I come out of the plane looking for the first elemet that will prove I am in Africa. Nothing special, apart from the airport name: Léopold Sedar Senghor, Senegal´s first president, the president-poet.

01.02.2012 | by Maria Vlachou