Artistic Migrations In and Beyond Lisbon | Artist Talks | 6th Session

Artistic Migrations In and Beyond Lisbon, organized by Ana Balona de Oliveira in a partnership between the Centre for Comparative Studies (CEC-FLUL/CITCOM/Dislocating Europe/Visual Culture, Migration and Globalization), the Institute for Art History (IHA-FCSH-UNL) and Hangar in Lisbon, is a series of conversations with artists, some of whom in residence at Hangar in the context of the artist residencies programme ‘180º Artistas ao Sul’, and other invited speakers. Through several media, the artists in question examine and problematize notions of identity and difference, not only national and diasporic, but also cultural, racial, class-based, gendered and sexual, as well as the notion of artistic production as a means for the investigation of history and memory. In 2015, one year after the celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, the fortieth anniversary of the independence of Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola (forty-second in the case of Guinea-Bissau) was celebrated. This series is also envisaged as an open and diverse forum for the discussion of the historical legacies of the independencies, the utopias and realities produced by the anti-colonial struggles and post-independence nation-building, while not forgetting the civil wars that ensued, in a broad geopolitical context, their endings, the more recent decades of economic liberalization and globalization, and the way these histories and memories, their celebrations and problematizations are examined by contemporary artistic practice.

Edson Chagas was born in 1977 in Luanda, Angola, where he lives.

He studied photography at the University of Wales, Newport (2008), the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London (2007), ETIC – Escola Técnica de Imagem e Comunicação, Lisbon (2002), and the Centro Comunitário de Arcena (1999). In 2013, his ‘Found Not Taken’ series was exhibited in ‘Luanda, Encyclopedic City’, the Angolan Pavilion curated by Beyond Entropy at the 55th Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion for best national pavilion. He was one of the three artists shortlisted for the 11th Novo Banco Photo Award, with an exhibition at Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon (2015).

Solo exhibitions have taken place at Stevenson, Johannesburg (2014), Instituto Camões – Centro Cultural Português, Luanda (2014), Belfast Exposed Photography, Belfast (2014), and Memorial Agostinho Neto, Luanda (2013), among others. Notable group exhibitions include: ‘Disguise: Masks and Global African Art’, Seattle Art Museum and other venues (2015-16); ‘Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015’, MoMA, New York (2015); ‘The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists’, MMK Frankfurt, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, and other venues (2014-15); ‘Journal’, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2014); ‘NO FLY ZONE: Unlimited Mileage’, Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon (2013); ‘Transit’, OCA, São Paulo (2013); RAVY Visual Arts Festival, Yaoundé (2012); ‘Future-makers’, LVR-LandesMuseum, Bonn (2012); and the second Luanda Triennial (2010).