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Perve Galeria and Freedom House - Mário Cesariny are honoured to present the exhibition “Hands of Sculpture and a visionary on the island (of Mozambique)”, which brings together the work of Teresa Roza d’Oliveira (1945-2019) and Reinata Sadimba (b. 1945), two important Mozambican masters, and the special participation of the sculptor Samuel Muankongue (b. 1974, Mozambique). The exhibition assumes itself as a fundamental moment for the understanding of modern and contemporary art in Lusophony, and will be on show between March 14 and May 5, 2023 simultaneously at Perve Galeria and Freedom House - Mário Cesariny. The opening will receive the presence of Reinata Sadimba and Samuel Muankongue, on March 14, at 5pm.
Catalogue: ISSUU
List of artworks in exhibition: Google Photos
(Synopsis)
Teresa Roza d’Oliveira, Luso-descendant artist who died in Portugal in 2019, was born on the island of Mozambique in 1945. An important activist for the independence of her country and for the end of the dictatorship, she was part of a generation of Mozambican artists that included Alberto Chissano, Malangatana Ngwenya, Ernesto Shikhani and, later, Reinata Sadimba. Settled in Portugal since 1977, she returned to Mozambique in 1990, where she stayed for about a year. On her return to Portugal, she lived until 2019 in the company of her companion Maria Emília Moraes. Her work is represented in several museums and is part of various art collections in South Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Portugal.
Reinata Sadimba, considered the most important living African artist of her generation, was born in 1945 in the small village of Nemo, on the plateau of Mueda. With a very unique career, she soon assumed an active voice in defence of her people, the Makonde, being part of the liberation movement that emerged after the heinous "Mueda Massacre" (June 16th, 1960), perpetrated by the then Portuguese dictatorial regime. After the independence of Mozambique, in 1975, having lost six of her seven children and having been abandoned by her husband, Sadimba, answering to an inner call, dedicated herself to figurative sculpture in terracotta, something that at the time was forbidden to women.
Reinata Sadimba's first works date from the end of the 1970s, one of which will be on display, as well as a wide range of works that deeply reflect a matrilineal Makonde universe and the primordial connection with the earth, elaborated from that time until the present day. Reinata Sadimba is, since January 15, conducting an artist residency with Perve Galeria.
“Hands of Sculpture and a visionary on the island (of Mozambique)” thus assumes an anthological character on the work of these two Mozambican masters, who have in common a language with an assumed fantastic and surreal character, reconfigured by a personal experience and a fertile imagination, addressing, in a traditional and modern way, the themes of social and individual identity - particularly of women.
The exhibition will also count with the presence of the sculptor Samuel Muankongue, Reinata Sadimba's only surviving son, who, having followed his mother's artistic path from an early age, learning from her the techniques of clay manipulation, has been treading a path of his own language. Her participation in the exhibition, with a set of works of assumed authorial stamp around the figure of the woman, is the consolidation of her path, which is certainly worth following.
Parallel to the exhibition at Perve Galeria and at Casa da Liberdade - Mário Cesariny, there will be an exhibition at the space of artistic experimentation 27ARTe, visitable from outside, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which puts Reinata Sadimba's universe in dialogue with works by Claude Yersin and Samuel Muankongue.