The presentation will focus on how the Mozambican-born, South African art school graduate responded to the final years of apartheid. It will describe the local circumstances that informed and shaped her search for a politically meaningful and internationally pertinent contemporary art discourse and critical practice. The limitations of modernity in contemporary art are recognized. The artist’s response is to investigate how to reference popular material culture (artefacts which are recognizable by a community and reflect political issues) as starting points for developing art works.

Born in 1958 in Maputo (Mozambique), Ângela Ferreira obtained her MFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She lives and works in Lisbon, teaching Fine Arts at Lisbon University. Ferreira’s work is concerned with the on-going impact of colonialism and post-colonialism on contemporary society. She has presented her work in numerous exhibitions worldwide and represented Portugal at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Her solo exhibitions include, among others, ‘Hard Rain Show’ (Berardo Museum / La Criée, Rennes, 2008), ‘Indépendance Cha Cha’ (Lumiar Cité, 2014) and ‘South Facing’ (Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa, 2017).