Africa-Press – Angola. The Casa Museu Óscar Ribas, in partnership with the Centro Cultural de Angola in Bahia, holds, in Angola and Brazil, the 2nd edition of Expo-Ribas, from 17 to 25 August of this year.
Under the motto “Memory Tourism”, this 2nd Edition of the Expo is part of the commemorations of the 114th birthday of the Angolan writer, ethnologist and essayist.
The expo essentially consists of providing the public with a set of information and curiosities about the artist’s life, work and legacy, through guided tours of his museum collection at the Casa Museu Óscar Ribas.
The program also includes a book and handicraft fair, radio debates, conversation circles (with academics, family members and writers), musical concerts, heritage dances, among other cultural attractions.
about the artist
Angolan writer, poet, journalist and essayist, Óscar Ribas was born on August 17, 1909, in the city of Luanda and died on June 19, 2004, in Cascais (Portugal).
He made a brief visit to Lisbon where he studied commercial arithmetic. He later returned to Luanda, taking a job in the Department of Finance and Accounting Services.
During his stay in Benguela, at just fourteen years of age, he began to feel the first symptoms of the blindness that would affect him completely and definitively twenty-two years later.
Regarded as the founder of modern Angolan literary fiction, following Assis Júnior, the author took the first steps in his activity in the field of letters, publishing, in 1927, “Nuvens que passa” and, two years later, in 1929, “Rescue from a fault”.
After twenty years without editing, Óscar Ribas surprised his readers with the book “Flores e Espinhos”, published in 1948, which, together with two new titles published in 1950, “Uanga”, and in 1952, “Ecos da Minha Terra”, constitute, according to some scholars in the field of African Literature, the author’s second phase of publications.
Denoting an extreme concern with the research, conservation and recording of his country’s traditions, the author focused on themes of oral literature, philology, traditional religion and philosophy of the Kimbundu-speaking peoples.
These themes would then form the basis and form the body of his work, consisting of the following titles: “Ilundo – Espíritos e Ritos Angolano”s (1958 and 1975), “Missosso” (3 volumes, 1961, 1962 and 1964), “ Angolan Regional Food” (1965), “Izomba – Associativismo e Recreio (1965)”, “Sunguilando- Angolan Traditional Stories” (1967 and 1989), “Kilandukilu – Stories and Snapshots” (1973), “Cultuando as Musas” and “ Dictionary of Angolan Regionalisms” (1992).
A prestigious writer in national and international literary circles, member of the Union of Angolan Writers (UEA), Óscar Ribas was awarded several prizes such as: Margaret Wrong (1952); Ethnography Prize from the Institute of Angola (1959); Monsignor Alves da Cunha Prize (1964).
He was also honored with the following titles: Titular member of the Brazilian Society of Folk-lore (1954), Official of the Order of the Infante, title granted by the Portuguese government (1962); Gonçalves Dias Medal, by the National Library of Rio de Janeiro (1968); Diploma of Merit from the Secretary of State for Culture (1989).
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