Angela Ferreira

Born in 1958 in Maputo, Mozambique, Angela Ferreira grew up in South Africa and obtained her MFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She lives and works in Lisbon, teaching Fine Art at Universidade de Lisboa, where she obtained her Doctorate in 2016.

Ferreira’s work is concerned with the ongoing impact of colonialism and post-colonialism on contemporary society, an investigation that is conducted through in-depth research and distillation of ideas into concise and resonant forms. She represented Portugal at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, continuing her investigations into the ways in which European modernism adapted or failed to adapt to the realities of the African continent by tracing the history of Jean Prouvé’s Maison Tropicale.

Architecture is also the starting point for further probing into aspects of colonial memory and reparation denial, which finds its more complex materialisation in the work A Tendency to Forget (2015) by looking at the ethnographic work of the couple Jorge and Margot Dias. Her sculptural, sound and videographic homages have continuously referenced the economic, political and cultural history of the African continent whilst recuperating the work and image of unexpected figures like Peter Blum, Carlos Cardoso, Ingrid Jonker, Jimi Hendrix, Jorge Ben Jor ou Diego Rivera.