Edson chagas biography of albert

FACELESS Transforming Identity: Blak/Black Artists from North Australia, Africa and the African Diaspora is an exhibition that challenges established notions of identity and explores ways in which interpretations of identity can be manipulated or redefined by blak/black artists through a revisioning of the face using devices such as embellishment, erasure, and disguise.

Working closely with fifteen North Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and ten African and African Diaspora artists, Cairns Art Gallery has curated this ground-breaking exhibition which brings together newly commissioned and loaned works across a range of art forms and media. For each artist, the physicality of the face, as a marker of identity, is explored and redefined within particular social, cultural, and political frameworks and contexts, to offer new meanings and interpretations.

For the artists in the exhibition the face is an important signifier of identity and by manipulating it or changing it in some way, they present more complex readings shaped by historical, political, and social contexts.

To support the exhibition the Gallery has commissioned two highly respected research/writers to contribute essays that offer alternative readings for the work of the artists included in the exhibition.

Dr Chelsea Watego (formerly Bond), a professor of Indigenous health at Queensland University of Technology Bond, has written an essay entitled More than the masks we wear, which offers multiple interpretations of issues that inform works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists included in the exhibition. In her essay she writes,

I have always been interested in identity, and the disjuncture between what my body felt in its being, and how it has supposedly become known within the health sciences and humanities in which I labour.

…It would take me some time to come to understand the dispossessing function of

For Found Not Taken, Chagas walked through the streets of Luanda, London and Newport, collecting discarded objects and moving them, at times slightly and in other instances significantly, before photographing them. Taken out of their context and photographed in relation to a carefully chosen background, the mundane items are turned into abstract icons that animate the city. What might seem at first glance a symbol of a society characterized by waste and instant obsolescence is also a reflection on the fact that what is perceived as real is actually a construct. A selection from the series represented Angola at the 55th Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Edson Chagas (*1977) lives and works in Luanda, Angola. He studied photography and audio at the Centro Comunitário de Arcena in Portugal in 1999; photography at the Escola Técnica de Imagem e Comunicação in Portugal in 2002; photojournalism at London College of Communication (LCC) in 2007 and documentary photography at the University of Newport, Wales, in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions were held at Brescia, Italy (2013) and Memorial Agostinho Neto, Luanda (2013) and Instituto Camões – Centro Cultural Português, Luanda (2014); Belfast Exposed Photography, Belfast, UK (2014). Group exhibitions include Transit, OCA, São Paulo (2013); and The 2nd Luanda Triennial, Angola (2010); Shifting Africa – What the Future Holds at Mediations Biennale (2014); Journal, Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2014); Here Africa, Château de Penthes, Geneva-Pregny, Switzerland (2014); The Divine Comedy, MMK, Frankfurt, travelling to other venues (2014).

Preview

1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair will be accompanied by an educational and artistic programme curated by Koyo Kouoh and will include lectures, film screenings and panel debates featuring leading international curators, artists and art experts.

Wednesday 16 October

Film Screening –  12.00 – 13.00

Opening Panel –  13.30 – 14.30
Stefano Rabolli Pansera (Co-Curator, Angola Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale), Elvira Dyangani Ose (Curator, International Art,  Supported by Guaranty Trust Bank Plc. at Tate Modern) and Edson Chagas (Artist, winner of the Golden Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale for the Angola Pavilion) will speak on African contemporary art in the international arena.  Hosted by Koyo Kouoh.

Market, Economies & Galleries: The Genesis of New Markets –  15.00 – 15.20
Paul Hewitt (Managing Director of Christie’s Growth Markets) discusses the nascence of new markets with a focus on emerging economies.  This event is organised in collaboration with Christie’s.

Market, Economies & Galleries: Building Appreciation –  15.30 – 17.00
Joëlle le Bussy (Director, Galerie Arte, Dakar), Maria Varnava (Director, Tiwani Contemporary, London) and Imane Farès (Director, Galerie Imane Farès, Paris) will convey their expertise on the current status of the market within and outside Africa and bring to light the artists that they closely support.  Hosted by  Valerie Kabov  (Co-Founder and Director of Education and International Projects, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare)

Thursday 17 October

Film Screening –  12.00 – 13.00

Market, Economies & Galleries: Exploring New Territories –  13.30 – 14.30
Antonia Carver (Director, Art Dubai, Dubai), Bisi Silva (Director, Center for Contemporary Art Lagos, Lagos) and Chab Touré (Director, Carpe Diem, Ségou) reflect on the experience  of introducing contemporary African art in the Middle East through MARKER at Art Dubai 2013 Hosted by Laetitia

On view from 15 December 2023 until 12 April 2026Exhibition vernissage 14 December 2023 at 6 pm Curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg in collaboration with the Zeitz MOCAA & University of the Western Cape (UWC) Museum Fellows 2023: Fine arts graduates Evaan Jason Ferreira from South Africa and Bulelwa Kunene from Eswatini, educator Mona Eshraghi Hakimi from Malawi, visual anthropology graduate Pauline Buhlebenkosi Ndhlovu from Namibia and Mozambican architect and urban planner Ana Raquel Machava. Sala invites you to stay. A word shared among many Nguni languages in Southern Africa, sala is part of a call and response between people parting ways – hamba kahle, a well-wishing of safe travels to those who are departing, sala kahle welcoming those who are staying behind to ‘stay well.’ Zeitz MOCAA welcomes you to stay with seventeen artists in our permanent collection; stay with us to re-imagine the museum as a new embodied space.At the heart of Sala is a set of questions. What is a museum and who is it for? What are the inheritances of the museum and how do we make it anew? What are the ‘ways of seeing’ that are encouraged by a museum? How do we wish to see art, ourselves, and each other in a museum? We invite you as the audience to explore with us the limits and possibilities of the museum and to take part in this reflection and questioning.  We welcome you to sit with us and with your senses – stay and be within your own bodies.Sala invites you to linger, to experience things with slowness. It offers multiple entry points for you to explore, to question and to challenge. You are invited to map the ways you occupy the museum. This invitation is extended through our exhibition guide and the process of map-making that asks you to engage playfully and critically with the relationships between meanings of works and images.Our curatorial process was consultative. It started with a series of internal conversations about how our institutional ident