Nelo Teixeira installation - part of the Angola exhibit in Palazzo Pisani
Nelo Teixeira make use of vernacular materials in order to highlight the simultaneous legacies of traditional, modern and post-colonial histories within contemporary Angolan society. Nelo Teixiera belongs to a long lineage of mask-makers, and his installation comprises a community of standing figural sculptures arranged in a circle facing inwards. Adapting the forms of ‘ritual’ objects, Teixiera’s work blurs the distinction between artifacts and art objects. The sculptures are fashioned from recycled and discarded materials found on the streets of Luanda, also raising questions about artistic and economic value.
The Angolan Pavilion for the 56th Biennale di Venezia is titled “On Ways of Travelling,” yet the exhibition more accurately invokes some of the barriers to the freedom of movement that are experienced by many in Angola, and elsewhere in Africa – visas, economic hardship, borders and road traffic. Yet “travel,” in this context, is not only meant to signify physical movement; it also refers to the meeting of disparate worldviews, lifestyles and temporalities, as well as to states of dreaming, desire and longing for change. The subject is nowhere more relevant than the present context in La Biennale di Venezia, an essential destination for international art tourism and an early precedent for the phenomenon of the ‘global exhibition’ of contemporary art.
Approaching the Pavilion itself feels like a form of travel through time and space: the exhibition is mounted on the second floor of the Palazzo Pisani, a Baroque Venetian palace on the Grand Canal that now houses the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello. In order to reach the installations, one traverses a richly decorated entrance hall to the sound of music students convening and rehearsing.
Nelo Teixeira installation - part of the Angola exhibit in Palazzo Pisani
Nelo Teixeira make use of vernacular materials in order to highlight the simultaneous legacies of traditional, modern and post-colonial histories within contemporary Angolan society. Nelo Teixiera belongs to a long lineage of mask-makers, and his installation comprises a community of standing figural sculptures arranged in a circle facing inwards. Adapting the forms of ‘ritual’ objects, Teixiera’s work blurs the distinction between artifacts and art objects. The sculptures are fashioned from recycled and discarded materials found on the streets of Luanda, also raising questions about artistic and economic value.
The Angolan Pavilion for the 56th Biennale di Venezia is titled “On Ways of Travelling,” yet the exhibition more accurately invokes some of the barriers to the freedom of movement that are experienced by many in Angola, and elsewhere in Africa – visas, economic hardship, borders and road traffic. Yet “travel,” in this context, is not only meant to signify physical movement; it also refers to the meeting of disparate worldviews, lifestyles and temporalities, as well as to states of dreaming, desire and longing for change. The subject is nowhere more relevant than the present context in La Biennale di Venezia, an essential destination for international art tourism and an early precedent for the phenomenon of the ‘global exhibition’ of contemporary art.
Approaching the Pavilion itself feels like a form of travel through time and space: the exhibition is mounted on the second floor of the Palazzo Pisani, a Baroque Venetian palace on the Grand Canal that now houses the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello. In order to reach the installations, one traverses a richly decorated entrance hall to the sound of music students convening and rehearsing.