My name is Kiluanji Kia Henda. And I'm an artist from Angola. I live and work in Luanda.
The fact that I'm from Luanda has been always a big influence in my work.
Talking about Angolan history it's talking about Brazil, it's talking about
America, it's talking about Europe. For me that's what important thing is: To make
the decent shorter and to improve the communication.
I grew up in the moment where it was very chaotic.
It was just after the independence.
That informed me a lot because
I also come from a family that was connected with was related to
the struggle against colonisation.
I remember my father and their friends
arguing about politics, screaming and yelling at each other because they
were aware that every political decision at that time could mean the life of a
lot of people.
In Luanda, everyone know when you're telling a story, you have to
apply humor if you want to have people's attention you know.
Humour is a
way to put the finger on the wound, it's a delicate way to deal with traumatic experiences.
For me as an artist, I have to go through all this traumatic process
that the country has lived because there's a big risk of living without
having access to your own history, without knowing what really happened in the past
In luanda there is a fort and in this fort there was some of the monuments.
They were taken down during the independence time
it was like this
history being like played again, you know, through those statues.
I thought if there is the monuments, the plinths must be somewhere
Those pedestals, for me, was like a metaphor
of this lack of reflection about history.
I decided to invite some friends of mine, I asked them to become like these live monuments on
the top of those pedestals.
It was kind of very strong to see like
Shunnuz Fiel the poet and fashion designer in the pedestal were the first
king of portugal was.
One day I was giving a ride to one of my friends and I
was really amazed when we stopped to had to have a beer and suddenly
appears that group of travestites.
They were about eight or ten and you
know and they were like doing the party, rocking the place.
So I met Porderosa
and I decided to invite her like to do this project
What I really wanted to create
was a trap for people that has this narrow ideas about Africa
So we use some
elements from these a technical groups but we use high-heeled shoes just create
this disruption there like; and it was very funny like to see people go inside
the exhibition room and look into this picture and say 'whoa this is our
tradition you know [laugh] this is a deep Angola this is our roots!'
And at the same time when they look it better,
when they have this second look, they see well it's not
even a woman, it's not traditional because of high-heeled shoes
Sometimes it took a while for people to see it because sometimes we get so blind by prejudice
I lived around five six months in Venice for an artist residency
There was this big crisis happening because of the immigrants coming from Africa
And in the case of Italy they would say like
'Yeah we're not used to Africans, we don't have a common history,
we don't know what these people are doing here'
But it was funny at the same time to discover that Venice was built by African slaves, what
they call the 'Black Moors'.
I bought some little sculptures like
classical European art
I thought it would also make sense to cover those
little status with condoms.
The condoms they are
supposed to protect you from the external agent but it has a double
meaning too. You also don't procreate. That's the thing what happened when we
close ourselves, when you become like a fort.
There's only one way of you to grow up,
the way is to be in connection with other cultures, the idea of acceptance.
It is about searching for dignity and love.
I'm always challenging myself to
to find like new forms, medias to express myself.
I found like in the
visual arts the way that all these medias could live together so
nothing was lost, everything was transformed.
That's what I love about
being a conceptual artist
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