Ângela Ferreira

Maputo, Moçambique, 1958
Lives and works in Lisbon

Ângela Ferreira’s own life story is woven into her work. She was born in Maputo, known at that time as Lourenço Marques, in Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony. She attended university in Cape Town, South Africa, during the Apartheid era. Her work draws upon colonial and post-colonial narratives, proposing a sculptural revisiting of the recent past and the power-based relationships between people and countries.

The “end of colonialism, the emergence of new countries and the burgeoning of an independent Africa is the period that most arouses my curiosity,” says the artist, whose work has a particular focus on liberation movements, revolutionary dynamics and the political, social and cultural utopias that proliferated within that context.

Ferreira’s artistic practice stems from processes based on historical research, challenges modern discourses and objects, and manifests itself in formally refined installations, where models, texts, drawing, sculpture, photography, sound and video all coexist.

Variously inspired by mobile and static architecture, buildings and monuments, individually or collectively designed structures, and vehicles for propaganda and counterpower, the artist produces works that celebrate, map, interpret and preserve models of the past, while imagining possible futures.

Lígia Afonso
[Plano Nacional das Artes and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian]
Curator, teacher and researcher born in Lisbon in 1981
Text originally written for Google Arts & Culture apropos the exhibition “All I Want, Portuguese Women Artists from 1900 to 2020”, curated by Helena de Freitas and Bruno Marchand
Portrait
© Courtesy of the Artist