A Sul. O Sombreiro
A pause for reflection in a time of crisis and a timely proposal for the future
Essay by Tila Likunzi
Wave after wave of perplexed preschoolers, wide-eyed primary graders and skittish adolescents arrive at an expanse of concrete structures and well-tended lawns. They are arranged into groups of twenty-five to fifty, usually by two or three adults that, at first glance, seem insufficient to control the engulf-
ing masses of private and public schoolchildren. In this society, however, unquestioning obedi-
ence is drummed into children from an early age. On command, even the little ones settle rapidly into silent ranks. They hear a brief ex-
planation of the place they are about to visit.
An explanation that delivers an invariable punchline: “This is the Memorial of the Found-
ing Father of our nation, Dr. António Agostin-
ho…” starts a sole adult voice, “NETO!” com-
pletes a chorus of children shouting at the top
of their voices. Curious and wary, the young visitors begin to troop in.
This is the setting of A Sul. O Sombreiro, the latest exhibition by Luanda-based German artist Iris Buchholz Chocolate. The young make up the bulk of the exhibition’s viewers.
The project, which evolved along two years
as a collaborative effort between the artist and costume makers, ironsmiths, hair stylists, musicians and architects, combines sculpture, couture, hair art, sound, video and performance art into a sequence of installations that explore the historical relationships between Africa, Europe and South America, journeying from guilt to trauma, absence to assimilation, mea-
surement to acceptance of pain, transversing past, present and future.
What does the world forget? What does it remember? Are we the victims or the perpetrators? Is anything certain in life?
Family and cultural ties, foregone and living, are an undercurrent of A Sul. O Sombreiro.
The artist is married to an Angolan and has adopted her father-in-law’s surname. She has
a Guatemalan aunt who is an illegitimate child of her migrant late grandfather with a woman native to Guatemala. Living in Luanda, she discovered parallels between the family of her husband and her own family, comparing the generation of her parents-in-law with the generation of her grandparents. Both lived through war, flight and hardship. The genera-
tion of post-civil war Angolan children she compares to her own, the so-called grandchild-
ren of WWII, who know the horrors of war
only as stories or themes that are never
spoken about.
How do we talk about themes that are never spoken about?
By establishing links between these family branches in three continents, A Sul. O Som-
breiro reopens the analysis of a past where her grandfather’s memoirs and his portrayal of the rare and mythical bird Quetzal are weaved into the cultural appropriation of Montezuma II’s feather headdress by Austria and genocide of peoples native to South America. A past analo-
gous to the hypocrisy and barbarity of the early beginnings of colonization in Angola and in-
humanity of the transatlantic slave trade (as captured in the homonymous novel by Angolan writer Pepetela), at a time when Europe cele-
brated an Age of Enlightenment sustained by instituting the racial inferiority of other peoples carried through in the early 20th century genocide of the Nama and Herero peoples in Namibia and mass murders of the Holocaust.
“The past is never dead, not even past1”.
A Sul. O Sombreiro holds up the mirror of
the colonial past to present-day post-colonial society. On opening the heavy door into the exhibition space, we cross a threshold. We leave behind the very bright and inert socialist-era Memorial promenade to be immersed in the subdued atmosphere of ‘Certaines n’avaient jamais vu la mer’, a video projection of water reflexes recalling the forces that shaped the diaspora: the severance of family, community and cultural bonds. This video projection was rekindled from the artist’s 2013 exhibition, Baobab’s Dreams, in which she used local cultural symbols to explore the Angolan col-
lective memory, redressing recollections con-
stantly reshaped by the popular imaginary. Here, the sea featured prominently in many local myths evokes the terrifying ordeal of those who, after being captured or sold, reached the coast only to discover the immensity of their path of no return. Some had never seen the sea.
While our eyes adjust to the dark, we become aware of the sound of bird cawings reaching
us from the central space of the exhibition.
Our attention turns unresistingly to the series of bodiless, suspended sculptures of gleaming metal, braided artificial hair, green silk and peacock feathers. Focal lighting falls on each sculpture. Each set stands out distinctly, arranged in a “sequential dialogue” with one another, reflecting the geopolitical dynamics
of the colonial era. They elicit the three insti-
tutions of colonial power: secular, military and ecclesiastic. The suspended armor and helmet (‘Armadura e Capacete’), backed by an advanc-
ing army of individual gauntlets (‘Luvas’), attest to the brutality and might of the “hard power” of military forces. Ahead, the bishop’s miter and cape (‘Mitra e Capa do Bispo’) allude to the “soft power” of the Christian ‘civilizing’ mission. Facing squarely back at these elements are the secular male and female wigs (‘Peru-
cas’), representing a judge and a lady of the court. They expose the interconnectedness of the power of the aristocratic societies in Europe with the colonial project. The wigs flank either side of the imperial mantle (‘manto imperial’), symbolizing a royal ruler. Of the mantle’s horror beautified by braids and feathers, interlaced in baroque landscaping supported by slavery, the eyes of the peacock feathers stand out as silent witnesses. However, its lavish tail carries an admonition: the legend told by the Sona drawing of the Cokwe people (eastern Angola) reminds us of the mortality of man. All things come to pass. The sound transitions to the grunts of an ape underscored by the rustle
of leaves.
There is, nonetheless, more to the past than atrocity and death. Occupying the spaces between these sculptural pieces, the spot-lit life-sized screen projection of the ‘Bakamas’ whirl dreamily in affirmation of an ancestral pre-colonial heritage. Their presences remind us that the colonized territories were not “emp-
ty spaces”. This interpretation of the masked dancers from northern Angola (Cabinda), the living representations of ancestors, create a spiritual connection with the departed, both
on this and the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The serial installation ‘Fio das Missangas/ String of Beads’ (in beeswax and artificial hair) embodies the extent of the pain and marks left on each generation.
“The past is present in our present2”.
Not intended merely as the revisiting and remembrance of the painful past, A Sul. O Sombreiro is a deeply sensorial experience planting us firmly in the present. As we explore the artworks, we hear an unceasing stream
of natural and manmade sounds – bird calls imitated by human voices, sounds of the tropi-
cal forest, the crepitation of fire or the crack
of an approaching thunderstorm. It’s the flow
of the three-dimensional multichannel audio installation ‘pele de tatu/cuirass’ created by Victor Gama, an Angolan composer and design-
er of contemporary musical instruments. As
the sounds both soothing and disconcerting travel from one end of the room to the other, they break the implicit silence of the artworks, giving us a virtual or metaphorical involvement with the figures and objects, enveloping us like a skin, releasing another potential layer of mean-
ings and interpretations. Like the feathers, referring to the artist’s Latin American family (or reminding us of the transatlantic “triangle” that the colonial project was based upon),
this piece is a reminder of mankind’s avid exploration of natural resources.
How do we distance ourselves from the
past when we carry the stigma of being the descendants of both the victims and perpetrators?
The artworks are a metaphor for the universal-
ity of violence and oppression. They embody
the guilt of the perpetrators of heinous acts. They are the traumas of the victims, incarnate. Traumas that, passed on from generation to generation, are relived to this day in expansion-
ist policies, prejudices, racism, requests for rep-
arations, civil wars, conflicts and north-south inequalities. Our inability to overcome the traumas of the past numbs and distances us from one another, turning us into beings pivot-
ing around ourselves, disconnected from an identical reality that we all share: the age-old urge for one system, society, group or individual to dominate the other.
Driven to seek solutions, the artist proposes catharsis through dialogue with the intrinsic duality of each artwork – creation and destruc-
tion, love and hate, peace and conflict. However, she chooses to answer these dichotomies by rescuing our sense of our body, which registers our experiences and reminds us of “who we are”. The present and absent body are the strongest subthemes of A Sul. O Sombreiro and are tied into cultural identity. Its absence in the art pieces is aroused by our presence in the present. We, the viewers, are invited to fill that absence with our individual skirmishes with these subjects. As an intimation to the broader, more complex topic of race, the use of braided artificial hair reflects African hairstyles, draw-
ing from her initial impressions and later discovery of the costs, rituals and procedures
of plaiting hair as a craft and form of self and cultural expression. ‘Momentos de Aqui/On This Moment’ (ink on paper) is a cue to the act of combing as an act of love and beautification, appealing to the valuation of traditional hair-
styles over the artificiality of the (baroque) wig. It causes us to reexamine the roots of our present conception of body, hair and skin as part of culture, counterculture, systemic or self-victimization, and the perception and acceptance of these physical attributes on the part of both the former colonizers and colo-
nized. The use of hair is besides linked to the first time the artist was confronted with images of the Holocaust. The images of piles of hair were burned into the artist’s mind. The hair, a part of the human body, made the absence of the millions of victims even more visible.
It sums up the key theme of the exhibition: cultural identity and the analysis of its con-
struction for both the victims and the perpe-
trators of violence and oppression. Avoiding the dialectics with which these subjects are usually treated, A Sul. O Sombreiro continuously ques-
tions “why we are” – the shared conditioning that has shaped the global post-colonial psyche. The composition of the various elements of the exhibition proposes that we take the steps towards a future where we have moved beyond the atrocities of the past, as assumed by the opening night performance of rock, jazz and soul singer Irina Vasconcelos (‘le fou du roi’).
By engaging in dialogue with the silent, sus-
pended figures, the present confronts the past in an attempt of reconciliation or reconstruc-
tion. This suggests the need for a collective effort open to individual propositions. It is “thinking what is to come”.
In a city starved of cultural resources, the Memorial to António Agostinho Neto, Angola’s first president, is an inevitable site of field trips. Thousands of children visit it every month. Hundreds have been encouraged to tour the exhibition, to hear unfamiliar terms like “slave trade”, “diaspora” and “colonial power”. They have been amazed at the length of the ‘imperial mantle’ while puzzling over the intricate Sona drawing, a piece of intellectual heritage. They have been, in turns, frightened and entertained by sounds of bird calls, rain and thunder. The boldest have danced to the meditative tone of the video installation. They have contemplated the serial installations and have been asked to consider transgenerational trauma. They have been encouraged to talk to their grandparents about the past.
For many of these children, it is their first contact with contemporary art in a formal sense. Moreover, it is often their awakening to some aspects of the history of their country and dimensions of their cultural heritage. Though intended for adult viewership, the exhibition is equally aimed at the young. Its educational pro-
gram, a novelty in a society unused to openness to creative exploration, undertook a series of workshops introducing the artworks through didactical and philosophical exercises meant
to stimulate thinking in young minds. It also provided an outlet for latent creativity and intellectuality, and room to play. More impor-
tantly, it reached out to children of all back-
grounds and races, from private international schools to orphanages. If there are to be propos-
als for a brighter future, who better to receive this message than the young? As put by a young exhibition guide, “we haven’t had time to discover our own history”.
At a time that Africa struggles to distill a philos-
ophy and culture that is truly its own, in light of its various histories and in an increasingly glob-
alized modern world, it becomes increasingly urgent to seek alternatives to ‘what is’ and ‘what was’. This process of self-knowledge is no longer the “search for the African soul immor-
talized in masks” discarded by Isaa Samb at
the 1966 Senghor Festival. It is their legacy in continuous metamorphosis.
As Angola faces the pressures of an economic, financial and political crisis, A Sul. O Sombreiro offers a much-needed pause for reflection, an opportunity to rethink the past and analyze its impact on the present as part of the process to heal the wounds of colonial rule and 27 years
of civil war. In the artist’s view, such a process must be nourished by the elements of Angola’s pre-colonial past that continue today, bringing to a present that identifies with it and projec-
ting it to a future that will value it. In that sense, the exhibition represents a foothold in the creation of the kind of cultural understanding where diversity exists within unity. It converges the need to imagine a future in which our differences coexist.
Anyone watching the strident, chaotic flow
of Luanda, which many view as representative
of the entire country, one would not think that silence is one of its deepest undercurrents.
And yet, silence pervades the very fabric of society, cowering a diversity of testimonies, erasing (hi)stories, secreting a multiplicity of truths from Angola’s colonial past, the libera-
tion movements, the struggle for independence and the civil war. In an environment 14 years
at peace, silence still wears political armor and inhibits the individual reevaluation of the pro-
ject of a nation far from achieving the utopia dreamt by liberation movements 41 years
after independence.
This is perhaps the time to begin talking.
1 Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner
2 The Pain of Future Generations