Africa-Press – Angola. The works of the Angolan artist, Ana Silva, were on display, from Monday (11) until this Friday (15), at the Mabe Gallery located on Grand Rue 25, in Geneva, Switzerland, where a mix of memories was shown in a single space shared with the Swiss-Uruguayan, Daniel Orson Ybarra, under the theme “poetic interdependence”.
According to the exhibition’s curator, Charlotte Diez-Bento, Ana Silva created the works exhibited during the month of June, in an artistic residency system in Geneva, and it was during this season that she met her counterpart Daniel Ybarra, an explorer of the light of organic processes that he incorporates in his work.
“In both artists there is a process of polysemic construction through fragments and successive unveilings, revealing a poetry of interdependence inspired by the plants in Ybarra and the affiliation in Ana Silva”, says the curator.
On the other hand, he clarifies that, “the formal investigation differs, but the theme is echoed in a poetic approach that refers to our deep ties in a holistic universe where all living beings and nature are linked by visible interdependencies in a common memory”.
It highlights the creativity and originality of Ana Silva’s work, noting that she expresses herself in the plurality of materials she collects during her walks through Luanda’s markets, distorting the primary use of raffia bags or other abandoned objects that she gives back life in memory work.
Ana Silva, who lives between Portugal and Angola, did not witness the opening of the exhibition because she was traveling to Luanda and only left her fingerprints on materials such as fabric, wood or plastic bags, among others, which she adopts and uses by applying them to path of creation different methods such as gluing, sewing or oxidizing metal.
Artist profile Ana Silva
Ana Silva was born in 1979 in Calulo, Angola. She currently lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.
According to curator Charlotte Diez-Bento, as a child, Ana Silva expressed a great desire for creation, while isolated twenty kilometers from her first village, on the farm where her father grew coffee, she used the material that surrounded her to build what which he calls “strange things”.
“She distorted objects, which worried her father and decided to take her to a psychologist. Later, she studied at Escola Superior ArCo, in Lisbon, and in Paris, revealing her artistic sensitivity.
Ana Silva’s creativity is expressed in the plurality of her materials. During her walks through the markets of Luanda, she distorts the primary use of raffia bags or other abandoned objects that she brings back to life in memory work.
On the other hand, he states that the experience of living in Angola and having limited access to materials during the civil war shaped his way of working with his immediate environment. Of its various techniques, it retains sewing, combining it with lace, African fabrics or nets. The artist’s forms are subtly feminine.
Her embroideries and scraps of materials tell the personal story of miscegenation and the role of women in filiation and the transmission of family memories.
Ana Silva also writes poems, like fragments of her soul that immerse readers in her intimate universe.
To this day, Ana Silva’s works are acquired by prestigious institutional and private collections, including the Louis Vuitton Collection, the Gandur Collection in Geneva, among others.
The Palais de Tokyo in Paris recently commissioned an installation. In 2022, Ana Silva participated in the official exhibition of the prestigious Dakar Contemporary African Art Biennial and her work was a highlight at the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, in Marrakesh, in February 2023.
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