Angela Ferreira

Listings(s)

'Appropriated Landscapes'

Jo Ractliffe, Guy Tillim, Jane Alexander, David Goldblatt, Penny Siopis, Santu Mofokeng, Angela Ferreira, Sabelo Mlangeni, Zanele Muholi and Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse at The Walther Collection

'Appropriated Landscapes' explores landscape typologies in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, and Mozambique, and presents works by fourteen artists, including Jane Alexander, Ângela Ferreira, David Goldblatt, Sabelo Mlangeni, Santu Mofokeng, Zanele Muholi, Jo Ractliffe, Penny Siopis, Mikhael Subotzky/Patrick Waterhouse and Guy Tillim.

Many of the artists presented in 'Appropriated Landscapes' have created images through topographical studies, explorations of nomadic peripheries and in-between spaces, or chronicles of social geography altered by divisive spatial planning and modern architecture. The concept of landscape here is not linked to historical notions of the picturesque and the sublime. Instead, the exhibition considers landscape as a prism of experience, a reflection of ideology, and a stage for the performance and perception of identity. Whether sweeping views, architectural compositions, or portraits, the varied works in the exhibition remind us of the density and richness of the notion of landscape, the complexity and subjectivity of its depiction - and ultimately, of our own spiritual, emotional, personal, and political relationship to it.

16 June 2011 - 13 May 2012

'Carlos Cardoso - Straight to the Point' and 'Kaapse Sonnette/Cape Sonnets'

Angela Ferreira at Stevenson in Cape Town

Ângela Ferreira's current exhibition brings together work in various media, Carlos Cardoso - Straight to the Point, and an audio/sculptural piece, Kaapse Sonnette/Cape Sonnets.

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 the distillation of ideas into concise and resonant forms. In the case of the first body of work, Ferreira pays tribute to the life and work of slain Mozambican journalist Carlos Cardoso (1951-2000), and in so doing asserts the importance of freedom of expression.

Cardoso was born in Mozambique while it was still under Portuguese colonial rule, and studied in South Africa during the apartheid era. After the country's 16-year civil war, which ended in 1992 with a peace agreement that provided for multi-party democracy, Cardoso and a group of fellow intellectuals founded an independent newspaper, MediaFAX - the first daily paper to use the fax as a means of disseminating information. With Cardoso as chief editor, MediaFAX spearheaded investigative journalism in the country and played a vital role in exposing corruption in the government. At the time of Cardoso's murder on 20 November 2000, he was investigating dodgy dealings among Mozambican banks as well as real estate corruption. With his assassination, Mozambique's image as a model emerging democracy crumbled; and the regime saw the lowering of one of its most revered banners: that of the freedom of the press.

Ferreira has produced a series of installation sculptures that act as monuments to Cardoso and the alternative journalism that he pioneered.

The work Kaapse Sonnette/Cape Sonnets references the structure of a broadcast tower, as erected in Mozambique in the 1970s. The 'tower' broadcasts readings of poems by Peter Blum (1925-1990), who moved to South Africa from Vienna with his Jewish parents in 1935. In the 1950s, Blum wrote sonnets in colloquial Cape Afrikaans in which he satirised local events and phenomena peculiar to the apartheid South Africa of the time. Blum's irreverent poetry did not endear him to the regime and his application for citizenship was turned down, prompting him to leave the country in 1960. He spent the rest of his life in Britain, forbidding the publication of his poetry in South Africa.

25 October 2011 - 25 November 2011

'Propaganda by Monuments'

Dan Halter, Hasan and Husain Essop and Angela Ferreira at Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo

'Calling all enterprising businessmen! The import opportunity of a lifetime presents itself. The Moscow City Council has decided to dismantle the hundreds of monuments to Vladimir Illyich Lenin which grace its crowded public buildings and empty market-places. Cities throughout the crumbling Soviet Union will follow suit. We ask you: where else in the world is there a ready market for statues of Lenin but in South Africa? Jump right in before the local comrades snap them up for nothing.' From Propaganda by Monuments by Ivan Vladislavic, 1996

As the structures of modern regimes are gutted and one society’s implication with another is reassessed, the idea of renaissance carries with it more than its weight in bronze. The exhibition 'Propaganda by Monuments' seeks to reassess nostalgia as a globalised process; less as a helplessly melancholic reconstruction of an idealised moment, and more of a recasting and importation of desired ideologies and material residue. Invoking a ceaseless economy of change and reconstruction, the work of eight artists presented together with a programme of screenings and discussions, use a variety of reflective, dynamic tools to collect and refashion ideals – confronting us with the shifting sands beneath monumental pedestals.

Curated by Clare Butcher and Mia Jankowicz, with catalogue texts by Amy Halliday and Ivan Vladislavic, in English and Arabic.

30 January 2011 - 26 February 2011