Kiluanji Kia Henda

Kiluanji Kia Henda to me

Interview carried out by online chat, at various times and on various days, punctuated by continual breaks in the Internet connection that maps out the transatlantic and ex-colonial triangulation between Luanda, Angola – Kiluanji Kia Henda’s home, a city that I have never visited; São Paulo, Brazil – my temporary home and the place where I ﬁrst met Kiluanji, a place that is close to the origin of the series presented here; Lisbon, Portugal – my permanent home, source of the schedule drawn up by my computer and Kiluanji’s ex-temporary home.

Face to face

08.04.2011 | by Lígia Afonso

Kiluanji Kia Henda’s rampancy – from the Triennial of Guangzhou to Experimenta Design: two projects

Kiluanji Kia Henda has displayed his art internationally – from Guangzhou to Cape Town, from Nairobi to Venice – which decouples his work from the exclusive legitimacy granted by Western contemporary art capitals. Another unique trait of his trajectory is that so far, his work has not been presented and sanctioned by the “small” world of its former “metropole”, Lisbon. As an Angolan artist, and therefore, from an independent country today and once a Portuguese colony, his art world’s has been extraneous to a set of cultural policies that take Portuguese-as-connection, and which rely on a closed circuit showcasing of art and its artists, traveling between ex-colonies and the ex-metropole.