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Angolan Sandra Poulson represents the United Kingdom at the Venice Biennale

Angolan multidisciplinary artist Sandra Poulson is among six artists chosen for the United Kingdom pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which opens on Saturday, participating with a work entitled "Sabão Azul e Água".

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The work is made up of four objects: a laundry tub, a colonial-era balustrade, a woman's lace dress and molds of human footprints.

The entire set was painted blue, with a solution that includes soap produced in Luanda, a cleaning product to which the artist attributes a broader and more complex meaning, with ramifications from the colonial period.

At the origin of this work is a reflection on the artist's great-grandmother, who supported the family by washing clothes for the Portuguese, revealed Poulson to the Lusa agency, which is why he included the tank for washing clothes by hand in the work.

The other elements are a balustrade, a reference to traditional Portuguese colonial balconies, and a dress made of "pano da costa", a white embroidered fabric that was used as a bargaining chip between Portuguese and Angolan merchants.

"This work thinks a lot about that relationship between the various people in society who are still processing this process of having lost something, but who also naturally identify with what was imposed and transmitted by the Portuguese occupation", she explained.

The artist recalled how soap, traditionally a cheap, accessible and widespread cleaning product in the country for washing clothes or bathing, was used at one point in the illegal trafficking of diamonds.

"The first time I tried to transport a bar of soap from Luanda to Lisbon I was stopped at Angolan immigration and questioned. They asked me never to have a bar of soap in my hand luggage again", she confided.

The artistic installation, she summarized, tries to use all these relationships to "ask questions about how we walk from here and think together when Angolan society has so many points of reference that are inherited from colonialism".

Sandra Poulson, 28, lives and works between Luanda, where she grew up, and London, where she moved in 2014 to initially study Fashion at the London College of Fashion, eventually completing a degree in 'Fashion Print' at Central Saint Martins University.

Since 2018 she has participated in group exhibitions at galleries and art fairs in the UK, Switzerland, Spain, Nigeria, South Africa, and has won several awards for emerging artists.

The Angolan's participation in the British pavilion was made at the invitation of curators Jayden Ali, Joseph Henry, Meneesha Kellay and Sumitra Upham, following a solo exhibition by Poulson held last year in London entitled "Economy of the Dust".

The other artists who are also part of the British pavilion, which has the theme "Dancing Before the Moon", are Yussef Agbo-Ola, Madhav Kidao, Mac Collins, Shawanda Corbett and Jayden Ali.

The 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale takes place at the Franchetti Palace in Venice between the 20th of May and the 26th of November.

The 18th International Architecture Exhibition is entitled "The Laboratory of the Future" and was programmed by curator Lesley Lokko.

The biennial has official representations from 63 countries, with Portugal and Brazil being the only Portuguese speakers present, but among the 89 architects and architecture offices, mostly from Africa and the African diaspora, are Banga Colectivo, an architecture office from Luanda and Lisbon, and the Brazilian atelier Cartografia Negra.

The Vatican pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale is curated by Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça and will feature an installation by architect Álvaro Siza.

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