Camarad(as) works like a hologram and embodies the urgency of creating a Glossary of Women Combatants in the liberation struggle of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, rooting itself deeply in the photographic archives of the aforementioned women's participation, and expanding a space for those memories lost in the intimate drawers of our heroines. This Glossary invents itself, trying to explain obscure terms through familiar ones, in the form of a philosophical and political manifesto, and highlights the twelve militant women before 1963. From the sculptural body emanates the possibility of perceiving these and other women comrades who become present, the Camarad(as). These choices reveal the condition of those who intervene today on archives and, inevitably, on the way history has been told to us. So what we are telling is not a new truth, but a videographic sculpture that contaminates official history and the memories that prevail in the interstices of the images and voices here.

 

The work arises in the context of a broader research and creation project, "Memories for the Future - Projecting Independence in the Feminine (PIF)", promoted by CIGEF - the Gender and Family Research Center at the University of Cape Verde and by Oficina de Utopias - Art, Design and Architecture.

Camarad(as) is an audiovisual installation that emerged as part of the UPCycles Audiovisual Creative Residency, curated by Ângela Ferreira and Maimuna Adam, in Maputo, Mozambique, 2019.

 

It was shown in 2021 at the exhibition "O Silêncio da Terra: visualidades (pós)coloniais intercetadas pelo Arquivo Diamang", curated by Duarte Belo/ Patrícia Leal and Fátima Moura Ferreira/Miguel Bandeira Duarte, Museu Nogueira da Silva, Braga, Portugal. link

 

In the same year, it was exhibited at UFA - Université des Futurs africains, curated by Oulimata Gueye at Le Lieu Unique, France. link

 

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Artists. Ângelo Lopes and Rita Rainho

Audiovisual Sculpture. 1.11m x 1.11m x 2.06m

Iron pipe, wood and glass Video 4:4 loop, 12'', with audio

Location. Nantes, France

Date. 2021

Photography. David Gallard