Africa-Press – Angola. Artists Kiluanji Kia Henda and Felix Shumba have been exhibiting, since Thursday, at the Natural History Museum, in Luanda, “Memories of a Poisoned River”, an exhibition about the ecological impact in Africa.
The exhibition, which will run until January 15th, is also on view at Jahmek Contemporary Art.
“Memories of a Poisoned River”, by Angolan Kiluanji Kia Henda and Félix Shumba, a visual artist from Zimbabwe based in South Africa, is a “powerful testimony of a tragedy foretold”.
In this exhibition, the two artists discuss the collapse of the Earth caused by the exploitation of mineral resources and how, in Africa, this source of “greed and illusion” of prosperity and future has triggered silent ecological catastrophes.
Tracing an imaginary and organic cartography on old maps, Kiluanji Kia Henda and Félix Shumba give voice to inert matter and wildlife through a fable with embalmed animals and plants – they are the protagonists of the tragedy that the exhibition portrays, diverting the focus from the predator of this story of self-destruction, Man, generally exalted as the victim.
The work portrays the scars that survive the slow regeneration of the natural landscape, in a set of new works by the two artists in charcoal drawings, murals, installation, among other materials, using mixed techniques.
It integrates two nuclei in each of the exhibition spaces, one more linked to the landscape, the other to the fauna.
Imani Jacqueline Brown, curator of the exhibition, describes it as “a multimedia kaleidoscope of a river’s memories of the rise (and prophesied fall) of extractivism”.
According to the American activist and artist based in London, the exhibition takes us back to “the time before extractivism, the people who once joined the river in rituals of care and gratitude. The river calls to them – to us – through the tides of the time. If you remember nothing, remember this: the Earth will defend itself by any means necessary. Wait for us, its children, to join it in resistance.”
“Memories of a Poisoned River” is an initiative by Jahmek Contemporary Art and has the support of Soclima, Tigra and Air France.
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