Decolonial Imagination and the Unmaking of (Post)Colonial Cities and Tongues: History, Memory, and Futurity in the Work of Angolan, Mozambican, São Tomean, Cabo Verdean, and Portuguese Contemporary Artists

This essay argues for the importance of attending to the visual production of contemporary artists concerning critical, decolonizing perspectives on notions of Portuguese heritage and influence in Portuguese-speaking African countries. Several
artists have been looking critically at sculptural, architectural, and linguistic structures, to name a few, left by Portuguese colonialism in Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cabo Verde, and Guinea-Bissau, as well as in Portugal’s urban landscapes. The
examined case studies are relevant works by the artists Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola, b. 1979); Ângela Ferreira (Mozambique, b. 1958); Filipa César (Portugal, b. 1975); Olavo Amado (São Tomé and Príncipe, b. 1979); Filipe Branquinho (Mozambique, b. 1977);
Mónica de Miranda (Portugal, b. 1976); René Tavares (São Tomé and Príncipe, b. 1983); Irineu Destourelles (Cabo Verde, b. 1974); and Grada Kilomba (Portugal, b. 1968). These artists bring such physical and linguistic colonial remnants to light from an ethico-political perspective with inventiveness and wit, employing artistic disruption in order to think critically about psychic and systemic coloniality in the postcolonial present and to conceive of decolonized futures.