The Politics and Aesthetics of Liberation: Revolution and Its Aftermath in Contemporary Artistic Practice from and about Lusophone Africa

This essay explores the ways in which artistic practices have revisited histories and memories of anti-colonial struggle, socialist revolution, and decolonization in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Portugal, while also addressing apartheid South Africa and the global Cold War. The cartography drawn here follows the histories and geographies of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid friendship without losing sight of several forms of imperialism, old and new. This essay examines the archival and historiographical potential of contemporary art in remembering histories of revolution and decolonization, notably those pertaining to cultural production and especially film, in the globalized, neoliberal present. My case studies are distinct but related works by Ângela Ferreira (Mozambique, 1958), Filipa César (Portugal, 1975), and Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola, 1979), which include installation, video, photography, and performance for the camera. What sort of insights do the archival imaginations of pasts, presents and futures at play in these works offer? And how far can the ethics and politics of their aesthetics go?